


It's Jack's Fault.  Really.     {a five-part trinity of Blame}

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Do they make an app for that?, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Experimental Style, Humor, Innuendo, Jack being Jack, Mucking around with time, Multi, POV Multiple, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Humor, Sexual Tension, Swearing, running for their lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2020-07-10 05:57:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19900936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: .When two in the TARDIS becomes three in the TARDIS, more than headcount changes.  The Doctor’s newest companion seems to be the catalyst. Or as Doc puts it: it’s all Jack’s fault.Really?The chapters are individual stand-alone vignettes.      The Mature rating is for chapters 4 & 5, which can be skipped to avoid the slash and OT3.





	1. Rose Won't Damsel Distressedly  (It Could be Her Fault)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloose09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloose09/gifts), [scifiangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifiangel/gifts).



> Bloose and Scifiangel, I wanted to write something for you both. Your individual DW preferences are so different, and I've written differently for each of you. Yet as my medication haze lifted, a strange idea came to me. 
> 
> "Jack's Fault" is a series of vignettes; take each for what you make of it. "Jack's Fault" is also a story; find my sneaky hidden thread through the chapters, and make what you will of the sum. 
> 
> If you choose to divvy these up between you, that's fine with me; it's pretty much obvious who gets what. But know that separate or together I will always love you two dearly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Jack gave her a long irate look that he might have learned from the Doctor, who still was MIA even though _nick of time_ was nervously drumming its fingers waiting for the berk. She ignored Jack just the same way she sometimes had to ignore the Doctor for his own good.

_Rose Wouldn't Damsel Distressedly _

_ (It Could be Her Fault _ )

"We’re both gorgeous, I grant you," Jack smiled winningly at the Consortium of High Priests frowning down on them sanctimoniously from the opulent platform. "No offense to the young lady, but I can appease your god far more creatively than she.“ Jack leered up at His Illustriousness, Highest of the High,

Rose had been doing an outstanding job of not breaking the _just buffing my nails_ smile that she had perfected traipsing around time and space with the Doctor and was getting a lot of use out of since the self-defrocked Time Agent had joined them. But the set-up Jack and she were in now was beyond ridiculous, and she felt her _Valley Gir_ l expression falter.

The large, raised platform where the Consortium committed the rapes and murders that they euphemistically called _Sanctification and Initiation_ held a bed, a carved wood basin thoroughly stained from blood, and a table with stuff Rose couldn't identify and stuff she unfortunately could, having helped the Doctor take down more than a few sods who used stuff that looked a lot like that. At least a third of the spacious platform was a viewing section, and the Center Court seats were already packed with members of the Consortium. The framing timber, planked floor and bleacher seats, and thick columns that supported the heavily embroidered and jeweled canopy had been stained black and buffed to a high gloss that glinted whenever sunlight hit the clearing. Center Court and the wood that framed the swish canopy were just as spit-polished but white.

The bed was stark in contrast: yellowed white, dull, and bare of decoration; Rose took it as the High Priests' visual euphemism for the state of the yet unsanctified initiates. Large metal floor vases like umbrella stands held the Priests' ferulas. The long golden staffs were topped with softball-sized spheres that looked like maces with nail points that flashed and sparkled, but were actually only ornamental golden balls encrusted with flawless gems faceted to precise points and edges. Well, for Jack's and her sake, Rose hoped they were only ornamental; the Doctor was cutting this rescue pretty close and Rose always preferred her large facetted jewels to be on actual jewelry, not weapons masquerading as the religious tools' religious tools.

Rose double-checked the clearing for unattended weapons, weaponized Acolytes, and escape routes into the forest that offered impediments to riled-up pursuers. She quietly cleared her throat, a question to Harkness, but with a shake of his head she was certain only she noticed, Jack continued smoothly.

"Release my lovely, well-meaning _,_ but unsuitable associate, Your Illustriousness, and I’ll do whatever tickles your god's fancy." He dimpled. "And by the time I'm done, your god will have discovered a few more ticklish spots in his fancy."

Jack laughed. It was a laugh the likes of which Rose had only ever heard in movies her mum had never given her permission to watch. Despite herself, Rose gawped at him. He raised an eyebrow at her and his dimples deepened. She found herself torn between her gut-deep annoyance at the total corniness of the situation the TARDIS had dumped them into, and an embarrassing Harkness-induced horniness.

"Very good," Jack purred as a Novice was quickly sent to untie her. "Now _shoo shoo_ little thing. The big kids want to play. "

Rose understood the look Jack was giving her; he wanted her to get into the forest, hide, and wait for him, but Captain _Seduction on an Invisible Spaceship_ had a lot to learn about her! Of course she was sticking around— if Jack didn't really have a plan and the Doctor didn't get to them in time it was up to her to rescue Jack from rape and murder.

Maybe when they were back in the TARDIS she should ask the ship to lock her two blokes off alone together for a few hours and let the clever Lord of Time and the self-confident Time Agent brag it out in a room bare of everything but two chairs and four walls covered in cuckoo clocks.

All eyes were on Jack as he talked the Acolytes into untying him so he could do the _Dance of the Seven Banana Peels_. No one saw Rose slip behind a tree at the perimeter of the clearing. As close as possible to the platform, she had a clear view of the matinée stage, the audience and major characters, and a nearby peat bog that the Acolytes stayed clear of. Yet she was totally hidden from view.

Hidden from view of the Consortium, perhaps, but not from Captain Jack. He kept giving her that _scat **!**_ look that Mickey had used when they were kids and she followed him and his mates around trying to get them to let her play, and that gave her an idea.

Leaving the woods, she skirted the peaty area, which she could see was a dump for body parts, and strolled back to the clichéd staging of a torture and rape excused as a religious rite.

"Hey mates, may I watch?" She smiled at the High Priest. "You are so dedicated to bringing the law to visitors, and I bet just _everyone_ gets a religious buzz watching you initiate the chosen new believers in your god's ways. I would really be sad to miss this huge opportunity to watch you sanctify and initiate Jack. I promise I'll keep out of your way." She batted her eyelashes a couple of times.

The High Priests' egos lit up the platform like a neon advert for the newest _Spiderman_ movie. This girl had it, oh yeah, and she didn't half know how to work it!

When everyone was drooling over Jack she’d grab a couple of the kitschy jeweled staffs and start swinging. If she had to bash heads or add to the bits in the bog to save Jack, she told herself, she'd do it. Jack would make a break for it then, and they'd leg it around the peat, or through it if necessary, back to where the TARDIS had dropped them off.

Captain Jack gave her a long irate look that he might have learned from the Doctor, who still was MIA even though _nick of time_ was nervously drumming its fingers waiting for the berk. She ignored Jack just the same way she sometimes had to ignore the Doctor for his own good.

Jack started his strip. He put a lot of time and choreography into removing his jacket, shirt, and belt. By the time he unzipped his trousers the faces of his executioners told Rose they agreed they’d chosen the right sacrifice. She felt somewhat miffed at that.

Jack teased his trousers and pants over his bum and wiggled. Rose Tyler, Universe Saver, took a teeny tiny break from the job to fantasize her two gorgeous companions giving her her own personal private show, with dance lessons after and, in a marvelous hiatus of TARDIS protocol, _dance_ lessons after that. ~~~~

Just before he started to work his trousers down, Jack stopped undulating. "Remember our agreement," he told the Consortium, gesturing Rose's way, "She goes free." ~~~~

Rose took the priests' general response as _yeah yeah don’t worry, get back to it dude!_ , except for the one bloke who'd been inching forward during Jack's dance. That one kind of tripped over his tool and shook his head as if he'd come out of his Harkness-induced lust trance just enough to open his mouth and almost remember he knew how to talk.

Again Rose felt insecure, and maybe a little bit unattractive.

Jack danced away from her coquettishly then looked at her over his shoulder with such a steamy, predatory animal look that despite herself Rose blushed and looked away. When she was able to make herself look at him again, Jack was starkers, awash in sunlight, and undulating sensuously toward the sacrificial platform. She couldn’t catch any view of his front, and yes _Doctor Oncoming Victorian Moral Hang-ups_ she bloody well tried. But she quickly overcame her disappointment. Captain Jack's back view was even better than he'd bragged.

It probably was her concentration on details that made Rose notice Jack's hands. The Captain had definitely palmed something, and he was twisting and readying it out of everyone's sight but hers as he moved. She watched him closely for a signal, ready to grab the four stout ferulas she'd picked out.

Jack _Discoed_ and _Hustled_ and _Funky Chickened_ up the platform to His Illustriousness the Highest of the Highs. The Priest held out his golden staff, which was some centimeters longer than any of the others and topped with the biggest most encrusted jeweled ball in the Consortium

"Nice ferula," Jack smiled. "If you let me hold yours I'll let you hold mine." 

Rose had to cover her mouth to keep from giggling. His Illustriousness obviously was having trouble making up his mind which of his ferulas to offer Jack, which was understandable 'cos after all … Jack. She used his hesitation to liberate the staff of the nearest High Priest. As her thumb moved over a rough patch on the smooth ferula she felt a pin depress. A long, seriously nasty blade sprang out from the bottom.

Rose raised the staff with its blade end high, and howled. Jack turned his head, saw her and the weapon, and whooped.

Jack commandeered His Illustriousness's gold switchblade staff and His Illustriousness; and jumped off the platform. Using the tiny gun he'd had palmed, he shot the support posts down, trapping the Priests and Acolytes under wood and the heavy textile; then he headed to her with his weapons and living shield. Rose cleared the area with less trouble than she'd expected; the emeralds were soft, the sapphires and rubies did a decent job, but the diamonds that spanned the globe's western hemisphere from pole to pole were unquestionably this girl's best friend!

When Jack and she met up, His Illustriousness and His Illustriousness's ferula got dumped into the peat bog. Before Rose could cop a look, that is if she had wanted to, Jack covered his own ferula with a silver-embossed sack that he'd cut off His Illustriousness's sash. He grabbed her hand and they took off. They lost their pursuers sooner than usual, and Rose got the feeling the few Acolytes who actually followed them through the body bog just didn't care.

Once they were safe in the woods, Jack stopped her. "Rose Tyler, either you're abominable at reading facial expressions as tactical directions or you have your own agenda and can be obstinate as hell. "

She grinned up at the Captain, letting her tongue poke out the side. That stopped the TARDIS's newest passenger cold in his tracks before he could get any further into his _You have to listen to the_ _bloke-in-charge_ lecture. "I was interested in staying to see your dance."

Jack's look was inscrutable. "So I noticed." 

But you intentionally kept me from watching, and you made sure you were always covered by the Priest's ferula, the Priest, and now that silly sack."

"Rosie, I got away from one self-righteous arrogant overbearing head honcho who gave me the option of following his dictate or being eviscerated, using only my boyish charm and a big ferula. I don’t want to have to deal with a second one, who I'm sure wouldn't be so easy to distract."

And I don't want to have to deal with another bloke who goes around acting like just because he knows what's best for Time he can know what's best for me; when what it really is about, Captain Harkness, is that because he's a bloke he thinks he has the right to tell me what to do for my so-called own good."

"Message received loud and clear, Commander Tyler, Ma'am. I won't patronize you again."

Jack clicked his naked heels and saluted her with the hand that she had been holding. Apparently he wasn't about to let the ferula out of the bag.

As they headed back to where the TARDIS had dropped them off, Jack and she discussed what to do if there were no sign of the Doctor or the TARDIS, finally allowing that other than going back and asking His Illustriousness if he knew anything, they didn't have a clue. Luckily when they got to the drop-off location they found the TARDIS already there.

The Doctor was leaning up against the ship, waiting. His arms and ankles were tightly crossed in front of him. His collar had been pulled up to his jaw, but Rose could tell that his teeth were clenched. His fingers drummed on his crossed arms impatiently. When he saw them, he glared at Jack's mostly naked body then gave her a slow sighing shake of his head.

"Dinner then debriefing, Captain."

As the Doctor turned to open the doors, Rose grabbed his wrist. "You'll cook, yeah, and you'll wash up. I fancy chips."

Later, Rose unashamedly eavesdropped as Jack got one hell of a dress-down. He agreed to abide by the Doctor's rules, including giving the Doctor all his weapons. She wasn't sure she believed he would keep his word, until Jack lit into the Doctor. 

"Of course I want to stay on the TARDIS! I will follow all your rules, Doctor. Most of them are necessary to scrupulously maintain the time lines, and many are brilliant and inspired. But some are illogical or capricious. Your firearms ban is stupid, dangerous, and potentially lethal."

Rose had never heard the Doctor stay quiet for a reprimand. She moved in closer and tried to see the men's faces. 

"You and I are soldiers, Doctor, we know what we’ve gotten ourselves into. I signed up for it when I took my oath to the Corps, then when I chose to travel with you." He put something down on the table next to them. "I just have again. You signed up for it too, whether you want to call it five-fingering a time machine and taking a really extended holiday; or liberating an enslaved TARDIS and augmenting your powers over Time with her techno-temporal capability in order to make a stand throughout space and time for the universe's good.

"You tell anyone you can make listen to you that we are each of us responsible for the choices we make. It's true, and I am fine with whatever will happen. I know you also are, although you'll probably bitch and moan anyway because that's just you. We have to be fine with it or we'd be in a different line of work. But there always inevitably is a piper to be paid for dancing with the devil like we do."

Jack stared at the Doctor until he nodded.

"So we both know who we are," he continued, "and who each other is. Look, Doctor, I'll shed a tear for you if the unspeakable happens, maybe you'll even shed one for me if I'm the one who buys it first; but we won't be surprised by it. But Rose's life dangles on our decisions, Rose is the one who will pay the piper for our dances."

That seemed to end it as far as Jack was concerned. Rose scuttled back into shadow so he couldn't see her as he passed. Then she carefully moved back to watch the Doctor. He was staring down at Jack's little gun on the table. He still hadn't made a sound. Rose slipped out as soon as she was sure he wouldn't detect her.

Why, she wondered, couldn't the Doctor and Jack see that she'd made the choice too?


	2. Translation Complication       (It Could Be the Doctor's Fault)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose decided that she had misread his body language. She really could use a proper updated translation app for traveling with aliens, especially if she was going to spend so much of her time lying underneath one.
> 
> [HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOOSE. I hope you like the changes. Those two still are extra chatty, and I know you’ll find the stuff specifically for you. jer]  
>    
> {and SCI, do you notice the shout-out to some other of our favourite people?]

_Translation Complication_

_ (It Could Be the Doctor's Fault) _

The Doctor and Rose had finally made it to the remnants of Teek's _Garden of the Gods_ Forest. The TARDIS sat just beyond, but a hard obstacle course of a run. The building storm signaled its intent with quiet fits of angry light on the night's horizon, ground-shaking reports, and ill-tempered, crabby rumbling. Even a half-hearted rain would turn the broken earth and rot of the desiccated forest floor into a fetid mudflow; but the storm's portending fury was less incentive to keep running than what awaited them back in the Lord High Examiner's prison if they were recaptured.

Heat lightning grew across the sky, the sounds of pursuit came louder, and there was no real protection in the rotted corpse of the decimated boreal forest. With an angry oath about the government's environmental policy, the Doctor pulled Rose behind the closest most intact stump he could find, pushed her down, and threw himself on top of her.

Rose raised her head with the muttered complaint, "I don't half hate the _escape_ part of your bloody _escape and rescue_ plan." 

"Shhh." As he forced her back down to the forest floor, Rose got a face full of dead underbrush, gritty dried-up mud, and rot; gasped for air and gagged. He wrapped his hand over her mouth and repeated impatiently, "Shhh!"

The Lord High Examiner's goons ran by, close. Too close. Their passage kicked up eddies of grit and powder that had the Doctor gagging too.

Once he thought it was safe, the Doctor maneuvered to look around for a better hiding place, preferably one less prone to choking them to death. As soon as his clamp over Rose's face eased up, her tongue began prodding at his palm ~~.~~ "Stop it," he hissed, certain Rose was covering his skin in slimy, uncomfortable human saliva to be as disgusting and annoying as she could. He would have wiped his palm on her dress to get her spit off if there were enough dress to do it respectfully.

The Doctor wasn't the only one of them who was uncomfortable and annoyed. He wasn't the one caught between the proverbial rock-hard forest floor and a heavy, overbearing alien twit. And he wasn't the one who was bloody brassed off! The only thing that Rose still could move was her tongue, and she rammed it into the hand that had been cutting off her air. As soon as the press of the Doctor's body eased she twisted, grabbed two of his fingers, and yanked his hand off her face. She glared up at him and poked him in the side, not too gently.

"Why am I underneath you, face down in this dried muck?"

"I had to cover you when I heard them. Your clothing and hair are visible in the moonlight."

"It clouded up before we left the village," Rose challenged shortly; but she kept her voice a barely audible mutter—it was one of the survival techniques she'd learned hanging out this year with the real trouble magnet. "That's how we were able to get away."

"It's been clearing intermittently," the Doctor countered, just as short and just as quiet. "That's how we were able to make it down the rockslide without breaking anything."

"Oh. After the first moonrise I just held onto your hand and kept my eyes on the ground so I wouldn't trip and bring you down with me and kill us both."

"I guess I could have been a little gentler," he conceded.

"Maybe just a little." Rose gently patted the Doctor's side where she'd just rudely prodded him, both apology and thanks for watching out for her. "It's gone quiet. They're nowhere around. You can let me go now."

"They aren't finished."

"Why are they so persistent? All we did was dance."

"Jack's fault. Now's not the time to go into it."

"Oh yes, later we're all discussing why if it's Jack's fault I'm the only one that gets a face full of muck and crud I don't want you to tell me what it all is!" She sniffed, got a whiff of herself, and made a face. "My dress is ruined."

"At least you got a few dances out of it. Rose, those blokes will be back, and this beat-up broken old stump is the only thing I've found that comes close to concealing you."

"There's you, always." Rose's fingers caressed black leather. "I'm not ungrateful; it's just that you flattened me and cut off my oxygen, which kind of defeats the object of rescuing me."

"Good point." The Doctor studied the fractus clouds moving through the moonlight. "The wind is getting stronger. It's hard enough to count on one moon remaining obscured, let alone three. I'm sorry, Rose, we're stuck here for a while."

"Then we'll make the best of it. I'm going to turn onto my side. Slip in behind me now, and when the need arises, roll on top of me. I'll do the best I can with your beat-up broken old stump."

"I’ll cover you from the rear." He nodded. "That's my Rose, always game to be with me no matter how I might end up hurting you." He kissed the top of Rose's head, cupped her face, and grinned at her. Then he jolted away so violently he ended up on his arse.

"Blimey. Doctor, what?" The Doctor shook his head — _it's nothing_ — but the look she was getting from him was so much more incomprehensible than usual. "What?!"

"I'll be right behind you; give me a nudge if something moves. Rose, are you paying attention? Rose?"

Like Monty Python's giant foot the weight of their words had just stomped on Rose, schlepping a banner that shrieked _And now for was something completely different!_ It wasn't what they had meant to mean when they had said what they had said, of course, but there it was and the bloody foot was crushing her lungs into her ribs and the thinking part of her brain into her, well anyway tormenting her head and heart. And there the Doctor was, pressing into her and tormenting those other bits and crushing her hopes with his continuing alien obtuseness. But she pushed it all out of her mind; she was quite adept at that now. "Yes, always." She sighed. "Okay, spoon me."

"Pardon?" The Doctor looked at Rose blankly.

"Spoon me. That's what we call it— you know, you behind me, our bodies fitting together tight like two spoons in the drawer."

"Ah, an Earth idiom. I really should program them into the translator data base." He scratched his head. "I'd planned to be turned the other way, watching out for the High Examiner's lackeys."

"Cheek to cheek you mean, not cheek to cheek. A pillow would've been nice."

The little hopeful smile Rose gave him made Teek's hopelessly devastated forest beautiful again. "Then we spoon," he decided. But he was curious. "Rose, why aren't we forking?"

"Fork knows," Rose mumbled dolefully to herself and rolled onto her side, grabbing a handful of leather to drag the Doctor along.

The Doctor made them spoon, all right; actually, he tilted them even further than conservative unadventurous spoons. He hooked a leg around Rose's, slung his arm across her chest, and dragged their bodies together, closing the gaps between them. Catching her head beneath his chin and trapping it in the alcove of his jaw and throat, he spread his jacket over her from her jaw to well below the hem of what he had sensibly remarked was too short to be called a dress when she had modeled it for Jack and him earlier. Rose's posh silver lamé dress, silver and gold embellished stockings, pale skin, and blonde hair were thoroughly concealed by his utilitarian black wardrobe. If any rush of moonlight were to catch them, they would appear just another black shadow on the ground. The Doctor was satisfied.

But not the one being thoroughly concealed. Trapped and folded and squished and smooshed by the Doctor's supple curves and bothersome mass, Rose felt like a Time Lord's blankie.

"Stop squirming, Rose, it's for your own good!"

"Doctor, please— I really can't breathe like this."

"I will hold you down, Rose Tyler, if it comes to that," he warned, and demonstrated what he would do if he had to, to keep his jeopardy-friendly companion safe.

"Bully! Brute!"

"Is this you throwing a strop?"

"This is me not letting myself be strong-armed."

The Doctor grimaced. Rose was right, he was being a brute. Holding her down with the weight of his body as she struggled beneath him like trapped prey did nothing to keep her safe. It was Jack's fault they were in this situation, but he had been taking it out on Rose. He started to whisper an apology, but Rose suddenly pushed back against him hard. Not expecting it, he floundered and fell away. "Rose!" He managed to save both his arse and his dignity, but that didn't make him feel any less a schmuck.

Rose was badly shaken by how vulnerable the Doctor had made her feel. She stared at him, fixing on his face until she stopped seeing the burly man that had held her down so easily and wouldn't stop when she had told him to stop; until she lost the afterimage of a hard unyielding body she couldn't get free of. She fixed on his face, on his compassionate blue eyes and soft lips, until she saw _him_ , saw her fantastic Doctor. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and brought herself under control.

Then she glowered at him.

"Control freak! You get off on being on top and don't you dare deny it! Do _not_ imagine you will ever get me face down under you again, no matter what cockamamie _best for me_ reason you try to give me. Got it?"

The Doctor nodded.

Nearby, the dried underbrush crackled then snapped. Rose went quiet and waited for instructions. With a look as contrite as he felt, the Doctor helped her finagle her body under his until they were face to face— face to jumper actually because Rose had made it clear. She met his eyes and gave him a half shrug of a smile. He nodded with a tentative smile of his own. He got a bright, trusting, Rose Tyler smile in response.

As he covered her and fixed his jacket around her, the Doctor didn't suppress a relieved smile. This Harkness thing had gotten to Rose, too, he suddenly understood. Rose trusted him, she trusted that he wouldn't hurt her. He would make sure she trusted that whenever he covered her body with his, and however he had to do it, it would be because he was absolutely certain it was best for her. He promised himself; when Rose was safe in the TARDIS he would promise her.

He could promise Rose more. He could promise that if she let him cover her in other ways with his body, she could trust he would always make absolutely certain that she was ready. If she would trust him that way, he could promise to make it the best he could for her, the best she'd ever had. His lips on her neck and shoulders and in her hair, and his fingers brushing her leg and between her thighs would be all the reason he'd have to express, so sure of her trust, and the only explanation Rose would need, so sure of him.

She'd turn onto her side and mold herself to him, telling him how she wanted his body with a sweet sigh… _My Doctor_ … and give his fingers leave to move over and in her confidently. He would dedicate his hands and mouth to making it the best for her, stroking and nipping, teasing, testing with tender insertion. Her long moans, breathless mews, and a growing slickness around firmer, more delving strokes would tell him she was ready. As he compelled her nipples and clitoris to the rhythm her body fancied best, he'd slip in smoothly from behind. He would press into her and she would tremble, his Rose, breathless and eager beneath him. And when they moved together-- just as he'd promised, it would only ever be _fantastic_.

He'd never touch Rose like that of course, but he promised her anyway. Right then he swore it to them both.

Holding himself taut some centimeters above Rose, the Doctor could cover Rose without pinning her down. He recalled when UNIT had decided it was a good idea for their science advisor to do calisthenics with the men. He'd been so young and fit then, and had taken an almost Human pleasure in showing off his stamina and wiry strength. And his firm biceps. And his tattoo. This body should be as capable as his third, but his leg was already starting to cramp up. And to be honest, Rose's breaths were bothering the hell out of hairs he'd never realized his jumpers left exposed.

Did Rose have any tattoos? It would be a sin to mar such beautiful skin with ink, unless it was done by a truly impressive artist.

Now that her face and lungs weren't being pressed into the forest floor, Rose was finding it much easier to breathe. The Doctor's leather jacket blocked the biting wind, and his body radiated warmth into hers. His jumper grazed her skin like an extra-big woolen scarf. Rose breathed in the delicious cocktail of worn leather, wool, perspiration, and musk that she could recognize even with a bag over her head, and lost herself in the dear, reassuring rhythm of the Doctor's hearts.

"Oh, this is so much better," Rose whispered after a few minutes and felt the Doctor start. "I'm sorry for before. It's just that you're so tall and sturdy, you know, and you're rather substantial when you're on the top of the pile."

"I know. I'm sorry I made you feel like that. That is the last thing I want you to feel when I'm with you, Rose ... to be scared or unsure or in any kind of discomfort. What I want you to feel, when we're together…" He reached for anything that wasn't completely honest but didn't sound lame. "That is the very last thing I want," he finally finished.

The Doctor was making Rose uncomfortable again, but it wasn't scary bad like before. It was scary worse. For one thing, he seldom apologized and was rubbish at it and the whole contrite sincere thing that went with. He'd actually made a decent job of his apology, and that told her how worried he was about them being caught again, which made her worry more about it too. He was making it up to her nicely for going all caveman before with a comfy warm windbreak; and his sharp angles and firm muscles had softened around her like his body was trying to make it up to hers for the scare. Her body would have to say, the Doctor's body could do an impressive apology caress. It easily made a lover's caress feel like sod all in comparison.

She quickly decided that she had misread his body language, although she really didn't know if the Doctor actually used his body, that is — who actually knew whether he, that is to say Gallifreyans, communicated with subtle body language the way Humans did? Oh, she really could use a proper, updated translation app for traveling with aliens, especially if she was going to spend so much of her time lying underneath one. ~~~~

"Doctor, I'm still having trouble breathing. Would you move down pronto?"

" _You what_?"

"Move down now. Please."

Yes, the Doctor decided, moving down pronto would be a fantastic thing. He had only so much control around Rose Tyler on a normal near-death day, and thanks to Harkness this day had been far from normal. It didn't help that instead of being fully focused on listening for the Examiner's goons, he couldn't stop thinking about her lying face down beneath him, squirming a little at first, like before, then more, then—Ah. Writhing, Rose would definitely begin writhing **.**

"Doctor, please move down _pronto, now_ , but mind my dress." ~~~~

"Don't start whinging again, Rose Tyler! We'll have to make some clothing adjustments. I'll do my best not to hurt you while I get it off, the jacket." ~~~~

"I can help you with that, the jacket."

Rose's voice quivered with mirth, and the Doctor knew exactly where she had just put her tongue. He began to imagine where else she could put that wicked tongue but stopped himself with a sharp rebuke. With the auditory memory of Yates counting off push-ups in the background of his clearly muddled psyche, he began to plot the shortest safest run to the TARDIS and what he was going to do to Harkness after they broke him out.

"I'll have you away to the TARDIS in a tick, Rose Tyler. I'm perfecting my clever plan."

"It's a man thing more than a Time Lord thing, I'd wager."

"Man thing?"

"The need to be in control all the time. Y'know—on top."

The Doctor barked out a laugh and maneuvered to kiss the top of Rose's head. "Not all men, Rose Tyler. And not all the time; that'd get boring."

On his way back down, the Doctor investigated Rose's cleavage. Her breasts were round and full and gorgeous. Something made him look higher. Rose's eyes were as round and full in their own gorgeous way as her cleavage. Round and full of astonishment. And her mouth, also round and …

Ah.

There was a moment when they both were certain Rose was going to ask a number of questions that the Doctor knew she'd wanted to ask for some time now, and he had been keeping her from doing by both scrupulous and unscrupulous means. But, then—

"Jack's fault," they agreed.

All went better than bad until Rose got an attack of the shivering shakes. As she trembled her nipples scuffed against the Doctor's chest. _What bloody good was a sturdy wool jumper_ , the Time Lord asked the Universe at large, _if it couldn't block out the stab and pierce and abandon of a pair of teeny tiny nipples only a bit colder than the Boomerang Nebula?_ The Universe at large did not take kindly to his tone. His calf cramped violently and his elbows gave out. Both Rose and he grunted as he landed.

"Yeah, so that's an _ow_."

"Sorry. Rose did I hurt you?" 

"You just surprised me. To be honest, I expected you'd have come down on me before now." _There was no Earth slang in TARDIS data banks_ , Rose quickly reassured herself.

"Superior Time Lord—"

"Yeah yeah. D'you think you could, uh, maybe ease a bit over?"

"I need a moment. My buckle caught in the underbrush."

"'S'that how you all used to call 'em on your planet?" _She was certain she hadn't said it, no, it made no sense, not a bloody word of it was hers even though…_ "Stop fidgeting, Doctor. Something is, your buckle is pressing against my, yeah, gammy knee.

"What gammy knee?" he asked, confused. Rose shrugged, which if he thought about it should be even more confusing. _So he didn't._ "Make the best of it a little longer, Rose. Maybe next time you should be on top."

Without the Doctor's very effective impersonation of a windbreak, Rose felt cold again. Frustrated too, although she reasoned that last was more the Doctor's effectiveness than his lack of. She hadn't been half frustrated by him ever since she'd swung over the pit of alien glop and he caught her and held her against him and grinned and then plunked her down. He had been lying on top of her for the better part of an hour now, holding her down and pressing into her with his voice and his eyes and his body and his malfunctioning alien translator.

The bloody twit had finally driven her _batshit crazy!_

"Bugger next time, Doctor! You want me on top? Get your buckle up here now an' I'll help you get it off, then we can fork."

" _What_ did you just say?"

" _What_ did it sound like?"

The Doctor gave Rose a look that was dead enigmatic even for him— totally off the _Oncoming Inscrutable_ scale it was. Rose's didn't half match it.

"I'll keep my buckle belted for now and find someplace to move to that's easier on both of us."

"O-okay."

"Suggestions?"

"If we leave now, we can probably free Jack in time to kill him before supper."

The Doctor chuckled. "As satisfying as that sounds, we can't. I will not take the chance of moonlight catching in your lustrous bedroom hair and sparkly come-and-get-it body."

"My what?"

"Shh. Hear something?"

"Yeah. Those dickheads are marching in a friggin' lock-step! Why are they so anxious to pillory and whip us?"

"They think I'm Jack."

"What the hell did Jack do?"

"Long story, but this is one of those times I really need to be on top. I'm going to cover you again now and I promise I'll make it the best I can for you. Rose, tell me how you want my body." He thought about what he'd said, tried and failed to disremember all he'd promised; rolled his eyes, gave up, and just ignored himself. He set his mind to concealing Rose.

She'd have to remain stock-still beneath him.

He'd have to remain stock-still atop her.

What if he said, right now _, Will you let me cover you, Rose, let me make it best for you. Tell me everything you want, every way I can please you. Tell me every way you want me_. _Rose, love, tell me every way you'll allow me to love you._ Did he know her so well now that she wouldn't have to say a word... He'd feel her heartbeat quicken, and her body would shiver to his simple, gentle kiss. The dominant note through the growing mix of their desire would tell him how ready she was to be loved by him, how ready she'd always been, and how right he'd been to finally confess his feelings. And with hands and lips and body would he cherish her—

"Bugger! Sorry Rose, I have a kink in my thigh."

 _That's not his thigh_ , Rose thought. _Fuckin'ell, does he still want me to tell him how I want his body 'cos I bloody will, I'll give him a bleeding frigging list of where and how and how hard and deep and fast, I'll give him a sodding instruction class on every way to shag a Human!_

He gaped at her.

"I s-said that out loud, didn't I." The Doctor's silence was all the answer Rose needed. "Where's a good solid lockstep when you need one?" she asked.

The Doctor almost choked himself trying to cut off a belly laugh. Rose slapped herself upside the head. In their situation could she have said anything that sounded more like a filthy double-entendre? She started to slap herself again, and he caught her hand.

"Alright. You— I mean I," she squeaked, "— well, you— Doctor, I know there are actions and reactions hardwired into our human physiology 'cos certain bits are necessary for the species to keep on, right? Evolution. Time Lords and Time Ladies have that too, yeah?" 

The Doctor grunted noncommittally.

"If bodies touch each other at those important evolution bits, they have to react, like a tropism, you know, growing toward each other. So, don't worry, Doctor, I know that it doesn't mean what it feels like. It's not _you_ , it's just your wiring making your body react instinctively. Like me grabbing for your strut when we start to buck—" she turned bright red "— I mean like grabbing hold of a coral strut to keep from being thrown to the floor when the TARDIS bucks us off-balance. I mean, look, it would happen with anyone's bits pressed against yours all this time, 'cos the bits are different like that. Not only different, complementary. It just happens I'm the one in this body whose complementary bits are touching yours, that's all."

"And it just happens I'm the one in this body whose complementary bits are touching yours, Rose?"

Rose laughed and patted the Doctor's arm. "Poor Doctor, wrong place, wrong time." She winked. "Maybe that is right place, right time?"

The Doctor's silence did not help.

"S-s-see, it could just as easily be Jack and me, or Jack and you even, if he wasn't so busy finding his own wrong place and time."

Rose took a breath, looked for that beloved steel blue gaze, and grabbed at courage she didn't really have. "We know it doesn't mean anything else, Doctor," she said with a steady calm, trying to repair what she'd damaged. "After we get out of this we just, you know, nothing happened. Still the Designated Driver and his Plus-1, yeah?"

The Doctor's mouth caught Rose's mouth still open, pressed her lips further apart. His tongue rushed inside and made certain unequivocal demands. After a moment of white noise, Rose's brain rebooted with a needy mew. He stopped kissing her.

"Rose, tell me how you want my body. **"** ~~~~

As Rose reached for the Doctor, the sound of her skirt ripping didn't even phase her. The Doctor crushed himself against Rose's lush sweet lips, softly yielding breasts and hard hot nipples, against the furnace where her thighs had made room to welcome him. Her legs wrapped around his hips and hugged his arse. He ground against her hard enough to destroy what was left of her silver lamé skirt.

Rose was liquid fire. The Doctor knew with every cell of his body that it was for him, ignited by him, he really did; but with a masochistic stab of spectacularly ill-timed angst he broke their kiss again. "Rose, are you sure?"

"Bollocks, Doctor; are you insane or just thick?" The Doctor stared off away from her as if he were actually, seriously, honestly considering the bloody question! Just as seriously, she considered hitting him upside the head. Then he smiled in a way that made her insides clench with a surging readiness that left Rose gasping.

"I hate to brag, Rose Tyler, but you asked so nicely, and the weather has cleared up." He wrapped a finger into a curl that lay against Rose's cheek and gentled it behind her ear. Blowing lightly, he teased the curl back out of place. Rose gasped. With an unapologetically predatory look, he dragged his eyes down Rose's cleavage. Goose bumps rose across her body, and he promised himself he'd taste every one.

"I hope your heart isn't set on a beat-up broken old stump." His mouth descended on hers again.

There was a frenzy of hungry mouths and ardent kisses, demanding teeth and lips and tongues, lustful hands and adoring fingers. There were soft moans and sighs mixed with playful, deliberately provocative teasing, and then a hurried decision to make a break for it to the TARDIS. There were dark and giddy suggestions for washing Teek's crud off each other in the shower. And for afterwards, after they had rescued Harkness and hung him off the hat rack by the bloody diamond bustier.


	3. Maybe It's Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He blocked his temporal awareness, caring not to know how many minutes or micro-minutes or hours or whatever the hell it was taking to fix Jack. _It will take as long as it takes,_ he kept telling himself as he worked on Harkness. It was not a mantra. Time Lords didn't do mantras.

_Maybe It's Time_

**→⏣←**

There had been none of the usual eyebrow-raising offers from Harkness to help get them out of their reeking filthy clothes, no adorable Rose Tyler snarky comeback, no eye-rolling. Their _*We didn't die!*_ hug was hanging in limbo— hanging on Time Lord technology and the Doctor's ability to save Harkness's life.

And the Doctor was hanging on by a thread. 

A day that should have been fantastic had gone disastrously wrong. Old man that he'd seemed to have become again despite the face, he could have used a moment after the TARDIS doors closed to catch his breath. But Jack's stuttering heartbeat and the wet rattling on his chest had unnerved him, leaving him too worried to do anything but kick-slam the door, readjust his fireman's hold on Harkness, and race the man to his Medical Bay. He hadn't even checked if Rose was keeping up.

He blocked his temporal awareness, caring not to know how many minutes or micro-minutes or hours or whatever the hell it was taking to fix Jack. _It will take as long as it takes_ , he kept telling himself as he worked on Harkness.

It was not a mantra. Time Lords didn't do mantras.

Rose hovered just outside the perimeter of nuisance space, watching silently except when she'd retched in the sink and he made her change her clothes and get them each a cuppa, and then again when she discovered that not all of the blood on him was Jack's and bullied him into a chair to take care of the wound he hadn't known he'd gotten. Mostly she just lurked unobtrusively and sniffled quietly into clean handkerchiefs he and the TARDIS provided as she needed them.

_Handkerchiefs._

_Huh_.

There was nothing more he could do for Harkness. Rose sensed this somehow, or the furtive glance he'd just shot her way was not as furtive as he'd thought it. He stepped back to let her move up and take Jack's hand.

As Rose talked to the unconscious man he found himself expecting to see better results from her doctoring than he'd gotten. Expected to see Jack open his eyes, tell her he was sorry he'd scared her, and tease her pain into giggles. ~~~~

Jack didn't open his eyes.

Jack was silent, Jack was still, and that was what caused Rose to finally break down.

This is all your fault Jack Harkness! You had to go and be a bloody hero, didn't you?! Friggin' wanker, bugger'im!"

He tried for a joke, "Not until the Captain buys me that drink." It fell flat. He knew it would.

"This is my fault," Rose whispered brokenly. "Clumsy stupid bint."

"It's not your fault, Rose." She shook her head and turned away from him, although she kept her hold on Jack's hand. He cupped her cheek and made her turn back and look at him. He was as gentle as he'd ever been with her, but his eyes were determined to burn through Rose's misguided guilt. "It. Is. NOT. Your. Fault."

It's not _your_ fault, Doctor," Rose countered softly, meeting his tender yet resolute caress with one equally uncompromising, and the burning certainty of his stare with empathy and love writ on a glare as unyielding as granite and so potent that Jack had begun calling it * _The Oncoming Rose Tyler for the Win*._

_Oh Jack._

Rose's hand wouldn't let him turn away. Her eyes wouldn't let his even whisper of his colossal failure. She was just as stubborn in the exculpation as he had been.

"Don't tell me I didn't see, Doctor; I didn't have to see. I know Jack. He did what he thought was best for us."

She sniffled then hurled her withering glare at the unconscious man. "You're a colossal arse, Jack Harkness! You're not Captain flippin' Harkness on some bleedin' Time Agency mission anymore, or just larkin' about, never having to really think about the consequences or about anyone else and what they want. You're part of our team now, you lump, just the same as the Doctor and me and just as important to it, and I don't like that you have your own soddin' agenda, oh yeah that's gotta go, you hear me! And you're obstinate as bloody hell! Bloody friggin' arsehole hero!"

"Rose… shhhh." He wanted to take her in his arms and say something to make them both believe that it would all be better; but he didn't know what to say, he didn't…

but he didn't…

"I didn't see a weapon. But that didn't mean he didn't have one and I should have anticipated," he admitted. "I should have played it safe, Rose, I should have found out what he wanted before I let him come up to us, I should have made sure he was who he said he was. I could have talked us out of a bad situation or found us an escape if it came to that. I can always find an escape, it's a matter of picking which consequences you'd rather deal with.

"Oh Rose, why didn't I think?"

Rose shook her head firmly. "Jack thought he was a harmless bloke, too." Her fingers teased at the quirky lock of hair that always seemed to fall over Jack's forehead. "Something made him decide we were in danger, and at that point nothing would have stopped him." She fixed her eyes on the Doctor until he stopped looking away from her. "You know that, Doctor. He'd never have held himself back."

Rose's eyes returned to Harkness's still face. "Bloody friggin' arsehole hero," she muttered with a little soft tender smile, "this is all your fault, Jack Harkness."

He smiled a bit at that and hugged his arm around Rose's shoulder, watching her finally brush the lock of hair off of Harkness's face. "Yeah." He needed to blame someone as much as Rose did; it might as well be Harkness. "Yeah, it's Jack's fault."

As soon as the words were out they felt like a liberation. Not comforting in any healthy sort of way, just— His mind kept circling through the day, rooting around for some sense to it all; but there was none. Like Rose, he unreasonably, irrationally, and desperately needed someone, something, to blame, so _Hello! Captain Jack Harkness_. As he listened to Rose rebuke the unresponsive Harkness a bit longer in that tough and loving way of hers, he idly wondered if Rose would be chewing Jack out like that now if he'd been conscious when she'd gotten to him. Maybe it was the only way she could deal with the ramifications. Maybe it was one way that humans said goodbye to the people they cared about most, when they'd done something heroic to save everyone's life but their own.

_Like Adric?_

_No. Don't grab hold of that comet's tail._

He dimly heard Rose sniffling again and held out another clean handkerchief. Rose took it with a quietly sobbing "Ta."

He'd thought he'd gotten Harkness to the Advanced Diagnostic Terminal soon enough; but despite his knowledge and skill and the TARDIS's technology, the man's body wasn't coming back from the massive organ damage and surgeries. He was being kept alive in stasis, but his body had to take over— it should have already. Jack wasn't responding to anything he tried. Jack's vitals were crashing, Jack was dying, and he was fast running out of time.

Jack had been lucid immediately after the attack, but that was no gift. Probably only wilfulness had kept him conscious. His eyes… Jack's too-clear, too-bright blue eyes… burned their moments into him. Beyond the man's agony he saw no regret, no indictment, just matter-of-fact acceptance and an earnest sadness that he hadn't seen in Harkness since the conman had realized what crashing the Chula medical ship had caused.

Jack's eyes. He would never be able to unsee Jack's eyes, or unhear Jack's quietly tortured voice. "Time ran out on me, Doc," Jack had said.

He laughed wretchedly. "There you are, right next to a Time Lord, Jack Harkness, and time runs out."

"What did you say, Doctor?"

He shook his head, turned away. ~~~~

_Out of time then, Jack Harkness. Out of time now._

Time.

Time was to blame.

_When did you realize time had run out, Jack? When the slaver came over? Was it when he looked us over like he was picking out the best cut of meat in the butchery? That must have been when he decided to take us instead of doing whatever he'd planned for those explosives in the cart. But maybe you didn't know it for certain until he'd ogled Rose. I'd thought you'd completely lost it then, shouting incoherently and lashing out like a madman. Your boot caught me so hard I ended up sprawled on top of Rose in the lilies. And you, you bloody fool, you went airborne from the recoil._

He scrutinized the ADT displays, forced an untried modification in the synthetic elastin, and told the TARDIS to let him know immediately if she detected any kind of response in the implanted lung tissue. But he knew it, time had run out.

_You saw the blaster, didn't you, Jack. I didn't see it until I pulled you off him and found it, and found the hole in your chest. You kicked me out of the way and sent yourself flying into him as he drew. You got me over to Rose and my jacket, sure, but you left yourself exposed and vulnerable… and me stuck over in the flowers helpless to do anything about it._

_I can't fix you, Jack. Saving my life will cost you yours_.

He turned away from the dying man tied into the useless most advanced medical technology known, shoved his fists into his skull as hard as he could, until it went all black and indigo and stinging pain behind his eyes.

And stinging, suffocating, soul-rending pain.

_Good-for-nothing miserable sonofabitch! Your rubbish life will cost Harkness his, won't it?_

_It will, won't it! Won't it!_

"Doctor! Stop it!"

Warm hands grabbed his wrists, pulled him off himself.

"Don't do this— Look at me, look at me! It doesn't matter who saw the gun when."

It took some seconds to register Rose's expression, realize that he'd said it all out loud. "Rose, I'm—"

"Doctor, don't you dare! We both know Jack. As long as you and I were in danger he would have taken the first go he could at the wanker. This is not your fault."

"It's not?" He laughed hollowly. "The moment Jack walked through my door I challenged him to prove he was bigger on the inside than he'd been in London. Rose, I bloody _dared_ him to do exactly what he did today. I should have expected that Jack always _will_ be Jack— just as you said, an arsehole."

He was a Time Lord, he should have known. He never learned his lessons, did he?

But it was their fault that he had kept them here with him instead of safe. It was their fault, for being too easy to need. It was their fault for being too easy to love.

He couldn't just stand there, watch the lifesign readings deteriorate and hear the TARDIS report she was out of options and Jack was out of time.

"Doctor—" Rose tried to grab his arm. He threw her off, but she grabbed a handful of leather. "You would have done it the same. I've seen you… I've seen you do it for me. For Jack. You did it for Mum and Dad, and for so many people you didn't even know. Even arsehole Adam."

He pulled out of Rose's grasp. "Stay with Jack, Rose. The TARDIS will alert me if I'm needed."

**⇤⇤⇤**

It is a gorgeous day… a perfect day… a _fantastic_ day for the Doctor, Rose, and Jack to visit Sofpasouk and tour some of the most exquisite gardens in the time period. Over three-quarters of the planet is densely carpeted in spectacular geometric patterns of living colour. In fact, the Doctor informs his companions as he pockets an unnecessary guidebook, they will be viewing flowers in more combinations of varieties and hues and shapes and fragrances than the human brain can process.

Rose rolls her eyes, Jack makes a wisecrack, the Doctor ignores them.

It's a fantastic day.

White marble statues of creatures loosely based on the culture's Pantheon of Supernatural Beings dot the flowerbeds and stone walks helter-skelter. Some are recognized throughout the galaxy as major pieces of priceless art. Some recent additions are just plain silly, like the _Games of Chance Inside the Sea Lord's Grotto_ , a grouping that includes a golden-horned man-bull demigod balancing a Royal Flush on his five extra-large gold penises, and a Sea Kitten nymph intent on applying emerald enamel polish to her lips and all twenty-two of her nipples. There are wisecracks of course; the best ones come from Rose and Jack is immensely impressed

"Rose—" The Doctor asks her a question that is very strange and somewhat disturbing coming from a nine-hundred-year-old time and space traveller in his ninth non-virginal male body.

She gives him a doubtful look. "You havin' me on?!"

"That depends, on what?" the Doctor asks, way too soberly.

Jack rolls his eyes.

The Time Lord has done some research on Sofpasouk and even double-checked the date before they walked out the TARDIS doors. They won't inadvertently do anything that could get them arrested. They will not break any laws or disobey any rules, go against any social or political prohibitions, violate any religious proscriptions or taboos or ingrained customs however stupid, or run afoul of any half-arsed prejudices masquerading as convention. They are being especially careful to stay on the paved walks and not disturb the flowers. And Rose and Jack have assured the Doctor they were only joking about graffiti in the Grotto.

Jack has been alternately attempting to charm, tease, annoy, sweet-talk, and bribe Rose into telling them which of the alien flowers she would pick for her wedding bouquet if she married an alien, and Rose's face has just gone from the pale blush-white of the nearby marble fox-women to a flush as hot as the fuchsia peonies in the formal garden they'd just passed. Jack catches the Time Lord's eye and winks; the Doctor crosses his arms across his chest and waits for Rose's answer. They love to make Rose Tyler blush, probably more than alien males who are more highly evolved than human blokes (as they keep telling Rose they are) _really, really_ should.

Each garden is gorgeous, but in the season of propagation when tender breezes stroke fertile blossoms, Sofpasouk's living tapestry unfolds and swells skyward, and the air is ripe with colour. This is what the Doctor had brought Rose and Jack to experience, and it is beginning.

In the garden before them the large long blossoms that look very much like elongated champagne flutes quiver, shaking free tiny motes of orange that rise and hang like a mist above the plants.

"Blimey, look at that, pixie dust!" Rose effuses joy. "It's gorgeous, may I touch?"

The Doctor nods. "Can you do it lightly, like a Drowenun butterfly gliding?"

"Oh, I can be a butterfly." Rose leans over the flowers and moves her fingers gently into the drifting pollen. "This pollen is sticky stuff!" She catches a bit more and threatens Jack with an evil laugh.

They watch the cloud of orange pollen drift over the garden of champagne flute irises and creep through a thick gritty haze of blue hovering above the next flowerbed. Configurations of teardrop-shaped green-blue pollen rise off the next flowerbed after that, hang heavy and low until a thermal takes them higher.

Throughout the gardens poufs of colours rise above flowers. Gentle thermals and mild breezes move them into always-changing patterns; clouds of colour dance around each other.

"Watch the pollen clouds move above the gardens," the Doctor instructs his companions, "They mingle but never combine, the different patches of motes and bits and pebbles and grains and teardrops and robin's eggs and, I don't know, odd-shaped balls."

Jack looks down at the Doctor's crotch then gives Rose a highly significant look. She rolls her eyes. "Earth, twenty-first century, " she clarifies for the uneducated Time Agent, and quotes a slogan, " _Rugby, a sport for men with odd-shaped balls_."

"Oh—a sport. Okay. Does the Doctor play rugby?"

"Oi! Lecturing on something important here. The different kinds of pollen carry genetic material that remain pure; what we're seeing now was the same hundreds of thousands of years ago, and will be the same hundreds of thousands of year hence. If you want proof, I'll take you back or forward, and we'll see exactly what we're seeing now. Sofpasouk's pollens drive the geneticists spare and the horticulturalists to poetry." He scratches behind an ear considering a moment. "Maybe it's the other way around. And this isn't all just beautiful, it's invaluable. Product fuels many planetary economies and has bankrolled conglomerate take-overs, wars, uprisings, and an over-the-top ostentatious wedding or two. Any questions… not _now_ , Jack."

"But _not_ not ever?!"

Before the Doctor and Rose can actively ignore Harkness, they're kissed by a light warm breeze, and the fragrant yellow pollen it's carrying across the gardens. The pollen is fine as refined sugar, bright as neon, and very tacky. Almost immediately after, a more robust breeze of sticky, aromatic magenta wafts over them. And then quite a lot of the green-blue and orange stuff smacks them.

"Huh. That doesn't happen often. Very specific meteorological dynamics of Sofpasouk … High warming winds off the southwest buttes sync with dry conditions and full sunlight at the end of the pollen-producing phase of the flowers' reproductive cycle—makes the planet kinda like a gigantic one of those fruit and vegetable dehydrators you lot like when you get into one of your health food kicks." The Doctor wipes off his index finger, licks the tip, and raises the finger into the growing wind. "Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness," he grins, "you're about to get a once-in-a-lifetime show."

"Once in a lifetime, Doc? That could be the best navigation I've seen from you since I came aboard."

"Oi!"

Rose laughs. "Look at us, we're psychedelic flower children! Anyone for a revival of _Hair?"_ She dances and sings, "Then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars!"

"I steer the stars," the Doctor retorts, but he's smiling at his companion's movements with enchantment and, yes he can admit it, love… Actually, Rose Tyler steers the stars.

Jack Harkness is more than ready to join Rose's celebration of joy, peace, and from what he remembers, lots of free love with very flexible Americans. "Definitely count me in, Rose. The first time I saw it, I liked the play so much that I took a short hop back to try-outs. I'm proud to say that at _Hair's_ Broadways debut I played—"

"Not now, Jack."

By the time the wind calms, the three time travellers' clothing and skin are Miróesque portraits in orange, yellow, red, blue, green, grey-purple, rose, and gold; covered in fragrance; and more sticky than the pudding could ever hope to be. They make jokes about each other's tie-died skin and clothing. Jack shows off some dance moves from when, he says, he stopped the show on Broadway. Rose sniffles a bit and sneezes a few times; she has to stop to blow her nose but she nails the choreography. The Doctor relates a humourous story about his last visit to Sofpasouk during the pollinator winds— what all the TARDIS had to do to remove the pollen from his greatcoat, and how the stuff ate two and a half feet out of his favourite scarf before she figured it out.

Jack stops smiling, whips off his own greatcoat, and caresses it in outright alarm. Is it enough to turn it inside out? Is it already too late to save the dear thing?

Wait. Is the Doctor having him on?

Rose sneezes. Sneezes again. Almost simultaneously the Doctor and Jack pull out clean white cotton handkerchiefs and offer them to her.

"You're joking, yeah?" Rose asks, eyeing the nearly identical white cotton cloths that are almost the size of bandanas, "You sure those aren't your surrender flags?" She sneezes again. And again. She passes seven successive hard quick sneezes and heads straight to adding * _allergic to alien tulips_ * to her medical profile.

Rose sneezes and sneezes and sneezes and grabs the large hanky out of the Doctor's hand, covers her mouth and nose, and sneezes; and sneezes and sneezes and sniffles and sneezes; wipes her nose a few times and makes a grab for Jack's hanky and sneezes and wipes and sniffles, and giggles as the two men use unsubtle textile idioms bordering on obscene to compare the size, amount of wrinkles, and spotty colouring of their two… obviously _not_ their hankies.

"Rose Tyler, are you sure you want to trust where Jack's hanky has been?" the Doctor asks.

"Maybe Rosie trusts mine because she remembers where yours was last and what it was up to," Jack retorts.

Rose moves the cloths off her face with a deeply concerned frown and scrutinizes them closely. Then she scrutinizes the two men who are trying very hard not to grin.

"Such innocent angels! You think you're very funny, don't you! I should give you both a time-out in a corner when we get back."

"I don't recollect if the TARDIS has a corner large enough to fit both Jack and me; you might have to ask her to make one. She'd do it for you." The Doctor considers. "It would have to be more than ninety degrees, I'd wager; yes, extremely obtuse."

" _You're_ extremely obtuse," Jack comments.

"Not anymore," the Doctor says with a wink to Rose.

"Aw, look at Rosie blush; she's just too darn acute, isn't she?"

Rose groans appropriately. She has just enough time for a sparkling-eyed tongue-touched smile before another fit of sneezing takes her.

"What are you, then, Jack Harkness," the Doctor wants to know, "obtuse, acute, or somewhere in-between?"

"I've been called acute, though I'm more often tagged hot and handsome." His smile is brilliant and boyish. He winks at Rose. "But I'd be very happy somewhere in-between."

Rose guffaws mid-sneeze, and the handkerchiefs go flying into the flowerbed. "Bother!" She leans out over the champagne flute flowers, aiming to retrieve them.

"Rose, don't—"

"Piece of cake, gentlemen." She stretches further, and then further. Her body responds as well as it ever did in gymnastics, maybe even better, and Rose thrills that running for her life has kept her body limber and strong.

"Really, Rosie, all that pollen—you shouldn't."

Uneven paving stones in the Sea Lord's Grotto wobble and crunch then settle roughly. A breeze susurrates a field of five-foot tall lavender. The delicate floribunda stalks shake like giant feathers, and tiny purple beaklike protrusions on their tips begin to discharge dark purple motes like angry spitballs. The door of a utility building some four flowerbeds away opens then closes with a heavy, hollow slam. An overloaded utility cart is pulled over the stone walk with a dull _thump-a-thump thump-a-thump_ rhythm. As Sofpasouk's dwarf cattails rub against each other, their woody canes creak like a lodgepole pine forest. None of these sounds has been audible above Rose's sneezing and wheezing.

A large man pulls the heavy maintenance cart past beds of flowers that resemble marigolds and rabbit ears, slows by the poppies to observe the TARDIS travellers, and finally stops outside the Grotto, as still and quiet as anything inside. He watches the Doctor, Rose, and Jack. A high stakes hand is being dealt at the Grotto. None of the three know it yet, not even the Time Lord, whose superior senses and impressive mind are focused only on Rose Tyler.

"I can't reach the hankies," Rose admits at last with a sniffle. Accepting the inevitable, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand disgustedly and cleans her hand on her denims, pushes her hair behind her ears, and stretches an arm back, wiggling her fingers. "Someone hold my hand," she sniffles.

" _Yech_."

"I'll get them," the Doctor says, stretching over the flowerbed.

Jack starts to sing, tormenting lyrics as only Harkness can. "Oh yeah, I-I'll feel up something, I think you'll love my hand… "

The Doctor and Rose ignore him, though Rose's burning cheeks now match the poppies.

The Doctor retrieves one of the handkerchiefs, but the other is beyond even his reach. He slips out of his jacket and has Rose hold the cuff of a sleeve. "Don't drop me."

"l'll hold you Doc, or you hold me."

"You haven't bought me that drink yet, Harkness."

Grasping the other cuff, the Doctor steps to the edge of the path; and with a grin to Rose he stretches out over the flowerbed. Balancing on the balls of his feet, and then on one foot, he leans further and further away from her. Rose expertly balances away from his changing center of gravity and the drag of his weight on his jacket and her. Watching intently from just behind them, Captain Jack balances his desire to remain on the TARDIS and in the Doctor's good graces against this blatant, almost irresistible offer of his companions' hot, tight, gorgeous backsides— _Goddess help him_ , just an easy squeeze away!

"Almost got it… " With a flourish the Doctor swings, dips deep among the flowers, and snags the second handkerchief.

" _Ta-da!_ " Harkness cries, applauding, "Take a bow!"

And that is when Rose starts sneezing again, hard and nonstop. Off-balance she tumbles into the flowerbed, dragging the Doctor's jacket, flipping the Doctor after. The champagne irises erupt violently.

Jack Harkness begins laughing his arse off.

"Harkness, stop lollygagging around and help me before we're fined and indentured for three days, and the TARDIS is impounded. We have to get Rose out of these allergens and back to the TARDIS for treatment." A chill raises the hairs on the back of his neck. He shivers and glances around. "Jack, something's off."

"Yeah. Looks like you've gone and upset a gardener or one of the horticulturalists."

Jack is already aware of the stranger coming toward them. The man wears the sturdy dark work clothes and heavy boots of a gardener or maintenance person and a dark thigh-length jacket. He is big and projects a presence that is more than bulk. A cart overfilled with bags of peat and other soil additives and miscellaneous lawn-manicuring equipment sits outside the Grotto grouping; it must be his, it wasn't there before. He could just be a caretaker come to check out the ruckus; if so, some niceties and a joke or two at Rosie's expense will lead to a friendly offer of help. But Jack has learned the hard way that it's better to deal with the fallout from premature altercation than to open Pandora's box too late to diffuse a time bomb. And the Doctor is sending off edgy vibes.

"I'd say he's a Section Head Gardener. Time to explain contritely and apologize profusely." The Doctor accepts Harkness's offer of a hand up out of the flattened flowers onto the walk. Gingerly peeling open the damp, well-stained handkerchief, he puts on his friendliest smile and waves the mostly white hanky above his head. The man stops walking, and the Doctor's smile widens. Clean or snotty, a white flag is the universally accepted signal of the unarmed man. "Hello. I'm the Doctor."

"Hello." Jack nods and smiles. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness. The poor butterfly who's just pollenated herself is Rose."

The Doctor gestures to their pollen-covered companion. Rose is feebly trying to get up but keeps sneezing herself back down. "We've had a smidge of trouble due to an unanticipated pollen allergy. We'll be fine once we get Rose away from the allergen: no pollen, no sneezing, no falling into things. But we could use a hand, ta." He waves the hanky and widens his smile into a benign grin.

The very short time that Jack has hung out with the Doctor and Rose hasn't made him any less edgy than he'd been since Boeshane, so he makes himself loosen up and holds his innocuous smile as the Head Gardener looks at the Doctor and him— _Nope, that's definitely not looking at, that's checking out_. By the time the man twists to look at Rose, Jack is certain they'd been visually undressed quite thoroughly.

Rose is on her hands and knees in the lily field, sneezing too hard to stay on her feet. Little pollen geysers erupt around her. Jack decides now would be a good time to gain some sympathy out of the Head Gardener for Rose's sad condition. "As you can see, the poor girl was caught unaware by nefarious alien pollen, and we are beginning to fear for her health— "

_Well fuckmeorange, he's watching Rosie like he's a furloughed Corpsman with a fistful of cash at the_ Pussy's Got Your Tongue Lounge. _She sure jiggles pretty when she sneezes. I hope the Doctor can keep his cool longer this time._

_Oh well._ Jack Harkness smirks. _What's saucy for the groundskeeper…_

The man is nicely put together and rather attractive. He's somewhat shorter than the Time Lord and more burly than Jack. His work pants are a dense protective material that still shows off substantially muscular legs. His upper bulk could be only layering beneath the full grain leather jacket, but Jack doubts it. This is a man who is used to physical labour.

"It will take an expert touch to retrieve your friend from the flowers without damaging anything more. I will do it," the Section Head says, sounding about ready to piss himself in smug self-satisfaction. "Stay here."

As he twists back to him and the Doctor for confirmation— and that's one smooth move the guy's got as he eyes up the Doctor like the special of the day — the gardener's jacket flaps open. Something about the unfastened leather's heavy, sluggish movement that seems almost in spite of itself triggers a wonderful memory of seeing taffy being made on the antique machine at a Boeshane Solstice Fair: hooked and stretched and thinned out and folded over onto itself, and pulled and stretched again until the stuff was sweet and stick-in-the-teeth chewy.

It triggers the trained Time Agent's senses like that too, like taffy. Like Time has hooked an indolent piece of Space and is pulling at it, making it drag the bulky jacket with a lazy, slow _pull_ and _stretch_ and _thin ou_ t and _fold over_. Tension buzzes through the leather like the _low E_ string of an acoustic guitar being tormented. It all feels wrong; local space doesn't usually play those kinds of games with a well-behaved bit of matter. But he can't put his finger on what's bothering him specifically. Scrutinizing the man, he sees a tattoo on the _not-a-gardener's_ neck and recognizes it instantly.

Offhand, Jack can think of three reasons why a Dargon profiteer and slave trafficker would be on a planet known for statuary of inestimable worth, its store of product that is rendered from the raw pollen and possibly even more valuable than the sculptures, and the most brilliant environmental and chemical engineers in this system. All incomparable, all irreplaceable. He doubts that any good can come out of this encounter.

"Much appreciated." Jack nods again, adding the courtesy of a tight salute and heel-clicking bow, watching carefully for what he hopes he won't find but fully expects to. The impostor gardener returns the courtesy, and there it is: the strap of a chest holster. Jack's eyes follow the strap to the bump of a holstered gun, and he barely keeps from scowling. He doesn't see the buzzing luminosity that would identify a charged sonic blaster, the slaver could be packing any kind of gun. But hey, it's the Doctor's outing and the day is young.

Pretending to be bothered by an insidious itch, Jack makes a face and twitches his shoulders, then slides his hand inside his collar and reaches to the minimal bulge of the shoulder holster he'd designed for himself. His hand flounders. He's at his professional best as he covers his confusion, but he feels like a new amputee chasing an itch he'll never catch across a phantom arm. It isn't until he slides a hand into a hidden pocket and fumbles for something that isn't there that he remembers all his weapons are in the TARDIS.

The Doctor catches Jack's very subtle moves for what they are and throws him a quizzical look. "Back in the TARDIS," he mouths.

"He's armed," Jack tells him, "I can't see what kind, but since he's a Dargon my guess is a blaster."

"Dargon?" The Doctor's eyes flash to Rose, who's having such a severe allergic reaction she can't even make it up off her hands and knees out of the foliage and is starting to have breathing issues. Jack and he exchange a look. Rose is completely unaware of their situation.

As they begin to inch closer together the Doctor mouths, "I'll handle him. Get Rose out of the flowers."

"Let me handle the Dargon." Before the Doctor can argue, Jack asks, "Do you have your screwdriver?"

"It's in my jacket pocket, near Rose."

"Does she know how to use the sonic to throw up a protective barrier?"

"Probably. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know if she's even able to right now."

Rose is gasping for breath and wheezing, dangerously close to choking. The Dargon looks her way again. He can't see much of her under the colliding poufs of pollen settling and rising, and starts to move toward her. By hugging the edge of the walk, the Doctor and Jack stay in line with him.

"I'll keep his attention on me, Jack. Circle behind that statue, come up behind him and disarm him."

"No, I'll get his attention; you get to the sonic, throw up a blind to conceal Rose. Make a big light show to distract him so I can tackle him. Have her get back to the TARDIS fast, no stopping to argue. Throw her over your shoulder and run with her if you have to. Otherwise back me up. "

"You're not armed."

"Unless you can get the sonic, neither of us is. "

"It's a dicey move, Jack."

"It's the kind of crapshoot I'm trained for, and we don't have time for this! Just make the biggest damn spectacle of yourself you ever have, and get Rose safely out of these flowers."

Something about the Captain tells the Doctor what Jack's next move will be— _and when_ , the Time Lord wonders, _did he start reading Jack's intentions like subtitles to a movie?_

"Harkness, you can't run full-on into an armed Dargon and beat his reflexes. Distract him, yeah, but do it with your charm. Come on to him, throw your jumper away and proposition him, whatever. Strip if you have to—I promise you it will work better than charging him. I'll phase out Space around Rose in a fantastically spectacular way that makes him turn his attention to me. Between us we'll keep him off-balance until I can set the settings on the sonic screwdriver to overwhelm his gun's computer… even if it's a blaster although it's a bit tricky. All I need is eight seconds, tops." He hears Rose choking, crying; her voice is edged with fear as she appeals for help. "Now, Jack."

Jack puts on his sexiest smile, catches the Dargon's attention, and slowly saunters toward him, making him turn away from the flowers. The Doctor edges toward Rose.

"Hello. Like I said, I'm Jack. We're here to enjoy all these priceless, drop-dead gorgeous works of art." He laughs coyly. "D'you have a little time to enjoy it too? I bet you like to enjoy drop-dead gorgeous things."

The trafficker's eyes light up with a dark glow that Jack can easily decipher even without his _tell_ : three beautiful top-shelf tricks in addition to the rest of his bounty.

A quick glance back tells the Doctor that Jack has the Dargon's full attention, and he silently steps off the walk into the flowers. Still uneasy, he glances around again. Wearing his sexiest smile, looking the most handsome and irresistible the Doctor's ever seen him, Jack is chatting up the slaver. The Harkness technique is working.

But no, _something_ definitely is very _very_ off. He goes to Rose with an uncomfortable sense of pushing through unnatural density. Whatever it is he senses, it doesn't belong here. It has to be bad, Murphy's law to the nth. But the panic in Rose's voice is even worse.

As Jack edges around the Dargon, slowly turning him away from the flowers and the stealthily moving Time Lord, he notices a buttonhole-sized blue glow inside the Dargon's left coat sleeve. It's faint, almost indiscernible; but just as before he knows what to look for without appearing to— _yes, there it is_ — that distinctive blue light, slowly pulsing. A band the size of a pinkie ring reflects in the sunlight, the tip of a narrow tube that barely pokes out from the sleeve. The Dargon is wearing a Riptide special in a customized release mechanism. It's the smallest blaster Jack has ever seen, a sonic pistol actually, a beautiful piece of work that the wearer keys to one specific angled pressure of his ulna— and now Jack is certain that the holstered gun is a sonic blaster, possibly a squareness gun like his.

He had been lucky that the slow swish of the heavy jacket caught his attention and he saw the neck tattoo, lucky that he'd had time to track the strap to the chest holster. And now he's more than lucky he caught the distinctive show of the hidden pistol. It changes everything. Two blasters. He hopes his good luck will continue because there is no way that just tag-teaming diversions with the Doctor against a two-handed blaster attack won't get at least one of them killed before they can immobilize the shooter.

Jack's last thought before he acts is he's getting damned tired of improvising and the Doctor had better make good on his promise to fix the vortex manipulator someday _the minute_ they get back inside the TARDIS.

He automatically thanks the Goddess Protector of Time Agents for giving him Time to discover the weapons, and he asks his _Sweet Mistress_ for just a little more of it now. Then the vortex manipulator is off Jack's wrist and flying; blue and green pollen explode off nearby sunflowers. Jack's heavy belt blitzes the peony garden further down; the fat fragrant volcanoes erupt with spurts of sticky pink granules. He's forced the Dargon into a dilemma. Weighing the options, making a decision, and responding should slow the slaver for the two seconds Jack needs.

The slaver has been caught wrong-footed and has to make a fast decision. The lone beautiful man is in the open and unarmed, but his actions are bizarre and possibly the beginning of an aggressive move. The other two are partially concealed and possibly training weapons on him, waiting for this signal from the other. He could lose part or all of this juicy catch. He could be shot. Can he still take all three? Take this one and force the other man out of the flowers unarmed? Maybe just play it safe: take the beautiful unarmed one, destroy the garden and kill the others?

Jack watches closely: the slaver's head turns – the Doctor and Rose? … Him?... Them? … It's only a moment each, at most; but those moments are all the captain needs. His greatcoat is off before he even crosses half a meter, swirling around his head like a bolo. It flies at the Dargon, hits him in the face and wraps over his head and chest before his right hand can reach the gun.

Jack grabs his left wrist, keeping him from using the pistol release, and slams an elbow into the Dargon's nose as he goes for the holstered gun. The guy is stronger than Jack and faster than Jack expected; he finds himself in the kind of hand-to-hand combat he used to be the best at. Used to be.

As they struggle he gets hold of the slaver's left hand and jerks a couple fingers backwards hard enough to force the P&S sonic special to retract and power off. He hears tendons snap then a grunt of pain… then the buzz of the sonic screwdriver along with lots of shouting he's pretty sure the TARDIS shouldn't translate. Rose is safe, but he'll celebrate when he's not so busy. He successfully blocks a knee in the groin but gives up leverage and his clamp on the trafficker's right arm to get it done, takes a sideswipe and feels two ribs crack. A rabbit cut to the throat makes him spit blood but he scores an eye, aims for the slaver's shin with a boot and all he can put into the kick. He can hear the Doctor's boots on the stones, not light on his feet that alien and with all his running the man should be faster. The slaver gets his gun out of its holster quicker than he can stop him. But not cleanly; he can block it, make the shots go wild. He shouts a warning to the Time Lord, and the running halts as the slaver gets off two blind shots through his jacket and Jack's coat. Then the Dargon and he are struggling on the ground and Jack is using every dirty move he knows against his heavier adversary. Knees and elbows and steel-toed boots swing out viciously. As they fight to control the blaster with one hand each, their free hands close tightly around each other's throats for the kill.

_Eight seconds tops, he says? Sonofabitch!_

The Dargon tries to angle the blaster into Jack's chest for a kill shot but slips in blood. He bears down with the heel of his hand and head-butts the bastard's nose up into his head. The raider screams but jabs a forearm into his cracked ribs, and the lung is useless now except for the pain signals that keep him conscious.

Shouts and grunts and the brush of boots on stone mix with curses and the buzz of the sonic screwdriver. Jack has enough time to realize that the Doctor is somewhere close behind them reprogramming the sonic and the Dargon bastard somehow got his arm free— He has to get the fucking blaster! Sound and heat raise the hairs on his neck, then energy sizzles past him one way or the other—maybe both, he can't tell. A prick in his side feels like a mosquito on steroids and pisses the hell out of him. He recognizes the sickly whine of a blaster going into recharge mode but doesn't let go and doesn't stop hammering at the Dargon.

The Doctor has avoided the Dargon's shots so far, but every dodge slowed his modification to the sonic. Cursing in frustration, he simply ignored Harkness's latest warning, making final blind adjustments as he rushes between bolts of sonic energy.

Someone screams. Explosions rock the area. The adjacent flower garden catches fire. The Doctor stuns the two men writhing on the ground trying to kill each other.

And there is quiet.

The Sea Lord's _Game of Chance_ looks like the aftermath of a bad night of strip poker when someone had an explosive hissy fit and everybody at the table lost. The kitten nymph's lips need a major touch-up, which is a shame because her bottle of polish is gone… vaporized along with most of her tits. The flower beds around them are on fire, and the air is sick with a cloying stench of burning pollen.

The Doctor gently eases Jack out of the death hold he and the Dargon have on each other.

"Jack?"

"You took your sweet time."

"Oi! The little distraction you pulled out of your arse to charm him ruined my new jumper, so don't expect any thank-you for saving my life." He jabs his fingers into the long rip that has split his scorched jumper almost fully in two and pulls the dangling pieces away from his torso.

Jack wants to wisecrack about the thin trail of hair heading south from the Doctor's navel. He opens his mouth… and groans, grabbing at his side with a hand that feels like a sack of boiled chicken necks, which reminds him, he hasn't cooked much since he came aboard and he makes a mean chicken soup, it's the beef bones that set up a richer stock maybe he should make a pot Rosie would appreciate it even if the Doctor is a vegan so-and-so he should ask the TARDIS what she does for the Doctor's chicken but he wants the real stuff for Rosie's soup and he may be flaking out just a bit now. Deciding extra oxygen could help that, he takes a deep breath and quickly realizes he'd forgotten about the lung.

_Damn that hurts. When does numb take over?_ _Oh nice cursing for an Earth girl, guess Jackie's_ one-night stands _weren't so much with the love sonnets, must_ be—

"Gesundheit."

'Thanks." Rose sneezes again, but into her shoulder now as her hands are busy wrapping around one of Jack's. "An' if you're still interested in knowing, Jack Harkness, I'm gonna carry a bouquet of silk flowers, and a wad of kleenex in my garter just in case. And I'm wearing white satin trainers, if the bloke complains he's not the bloke for me."

"Honeymoon?" Jack asks weakly.

"What does it matter, I'll be in the middle of some mayhem no matter."

"Did he finally ask… "

"He who? Finally ask what? Jack? Jack, we could have a contest... who can blow their wad fastest, me or you; the Doctor could be the judge. Jack… hey!... Him be the target then? Jack?" Her voce rises as she panics. "Jack?!"

"Rose, let me take care of him."

The Dargon's blaster is partially wrapped in what's left of Jack's coat, and the Doctor doesn't have the time or patience to unwrap it. He stomps down hard until he's sure the blaster has rolled free. The audible crack of bone doesn't phase him or Rose in the least. Jack is too out of it now to notice, but he's got a death grip around the slaver's fast-release pistol and starts to struggle as the Doctor tries to pry his hand off.

"Jack, I've got the pistol... Let go."

Jack's hand eases then slips away, and the Doctor gets the pistol off the Dargon's wrist release The little weapon is depleted but not completely dead. He checks quickly for a safety lock—there isn't one. Rolling his eyes, he gives it a final discharge then drops it into a pocket, forgotten.

"Rosie—"

"Yeah, Jack, I'm here."

"D'you like chicken soup?"

"Love it. Love you more."

Rose smiles and strokes his damp forelock off out of the way. Jack smiles back blindly, his gorgeous eyes glazing over. Rose thinks it must be from something the Doctor gave him for pain, because the tension is relaxing out of his face and it's _notnotnot_ because he's… because of anything else because the Doctor won't let it be.

"Rose, make sure this one will stick around until the Shadow Proclamation can get here. Be careful, check for other weapons, let me know if he wakes up, and I'll—" The Doctor shudders, looks around quickly.

"Don't worry about that, Doctor," Rose spits, "I'll do it."

With a nod, he focuses all his attention on Jack.

Rose flips the Dargon on his stomach and ties his hands behind him with one of the hankies. She ignores his screams of pain. Her hoodie binds his ankles. She loops her belt between them, pulling his wrists and ankles together tight enough to get tears and a mumbled appeal. She ignores it. She sneezes but doesn't take even a few seconds to sniffle, wiping her nose on her sleeve as she works. When he's good and hogtied she frisks him for weapons. She does not ask the Doctor to check his wounds. She does, however, kick him in the side and watch him try to move away to make sure the bindings are tight enough. Then she stuffs the other snotty hanky into his friggin' gob to keep him quiet.

"C'mon mate, try something, yeah, give me a reason."

Rose joins the Doctor as he shudders onto his feet with the injured, unconscious captain and heaves him over a shoulder. "C'mon!" The Doctor takes off for the TARDIS as fast as he can run. The sniffling, sneezing, and cursing behind him tells the Doctor that Rose is keeping up.

**⇥⇥⇥**

The medbay lights brightened as the Doctor walked back in. Rose was sitting in a chair she'd pulled up to the bed, angled to let her watch the ADT displays. The Time Lord was certain she'd not let go of Harkness's hand since he left them.

She twisted and watched him come close. ~~~~

Rose's hair was matted with grime and tears, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Her clothes—all of her actually except for her face and hands, which she'd washed, was a sticky rainbow of pollen. _How exhausted and worried she looks_ , he thought, _how angry. How Human and caring and special_. He smiled. Rose gave him a weak smile in return and sneezed. He held out a clean hanky.

"Didn't know how long you'd be. You tend to lose track of time."

"Not always," he said softly. ~~~~

"Jack still hasn't woken up, but his colour seems a little better. He's breathing easier too."

"Jack will be okay, Rose, I promise. Go take a long shower and get us each a cuppa."

"No, I'm staying here."

"Rosie?"

"I'm here, Jack."

Jack's first full breaths rattled wetly, but the next ones didn't sound so scary bad, so the Doctor let the last of his fears ease out of his mind.

"Ow. Someone remind me to wear full-body armour next time we take Rosie to pick out her wedding bouquet."

"Next time I'll wear the full-body armour, Jack Harkness, and you'll behave yourself," she warned.

"Never. Next time wear one of those tiny nurses' outfits that don't leave room for kleenex. And I'll blow my wad whenever you say."

Jack tried to give Rose a wink and a salacious smile. The Doctor thought he wasn't really selling it, but Jack had earned the right and he kept that opinion to himself. Still, he couldn't stop a signature eye-roll. And then a silent thanks to the TARDIS, who'd told him Harkness's breathing had settled into a normal pattern.

"Aw c'mon, Doc, loosen up and humour the patient. It's a good thing I spotted the distinctive blue glow. Otherwise at least one of us would be more dead than dead gorgeous now." He batted his lashes.

"Blue glow?" Rose asked.

"Sonic. He had a sonic blaster in a holster on him and a sonic pistol hidden in a quick-release mechanism under on his forearm." Jack shrugged it off as he explained to Rose. "I've never seen a pistol that small before, so I couldn't take a chance on what it's capable of."

"With the element of surprise, a fully charged sonic pistol can be almost as efficient as your squareness gun." The Doctor pulled the pistol out of a pocket and studied it thoughtfully. "It's a Riptide Point-&-Shoot Special, that's been modified with field spread settings. It made a right mess out of the nymph with the body-polish fetish." And out of Jack's body, originally. Jack had been hit by both blasters, it was no wonder the TARDIS hadn't been able to stop the cascading damages. "This one hasn't got a safety; it shouldn't be hidden in all the places you've been suspected of hiding your gentleman's guns until you add one." He gave Harkness a _look_ , "Especially if that arse of yours is as fantastic as you keep telling me it is. While you're at it, Harkness, tweak your spread; I don't want anything less than the most precise control you can squeeze out of it."

Rose's jaw dropped into her hands. Jack's plunged through the floor, leaving a great smoking hole, plummeted three storeys, and finally crash-landed in an auxiliary control room he'd moved down to storage low, denting an old console. The Doctor grinned, exceedingly proud of himself. He leaned over and laid the gun on the table next to Jack. His patient, however, appeared more interested in something else his action had accomplished. Jack's hand closed around his arm. Harkness was still too weak to sit up to his eye level, so he stayed put.

"Hey, Doc, looking mighty fine without that jacket and _hello!_ most of your jumper missing."

"Yesterday's news, Harkness, catch yourself up."

"Yesterday's news is today's featured article, or in this case, lack of," Jack smiled. The man's eyes burned a swath down his abdomen and followed the narrow trail of hair from his navel. Harkness didn't even bother to pretend to stop at his belt and made a point of checking out the bulge beneath his fly. "Love your by-line, Doc **."**

Under other circumstances he would have considered throttling Harkness, but the man was obviously trying so hard to make the situation feel normal that he just kept his mouth shut and his eyebrows raised and waited for Jack to finish ogling his package **.**

"So, Rosie: you as a naughty nurse, me in fast release body armour. What d'you figure for the Doctor besides his signature twinkle and grin? Maybe the sonic pistol."

Jack smiled again, making three in less than half a minute. The Doctor figured that grinning was like working out a sore muscle to Captain Harkness. He rolled his eyes. "In your dreams, Harkness."

"And in Rose's dreams?"

"Anything sonic the Doctor would have is quite a lot bigger than that little pistol," Rose acknowledged.

Harkness eyeballed his crotch shamelessly again. Rose's eyes roved his body too, and she made no more attempt to hide it than Jack. Any other time, being looked at like that by her he'd be getting hard. Rose knew it too. She smiled innocently.

Jack's eyes connected with his. Giving Jack a little of his own brazenness back, he smiled slowly and let his eyes do the talking. Jack's breath caught. "You still haven't bought me that drink, Harkness."

As he stood up his eyes dropped to Jack's chest; he watched its rise and fall until he was certain the man's lung was working and his breathing had found a rhythm close to normal. "How about some water, Jack? Keep it down an hour and the IV gets pulled." He started to turn, but Jack dragged at his jumper, brushing off the residue of a day that had just picked up— yellow and orange pollen still tacky, stuck with marble dust and grit, a mixture of dusty white, grey, emerald green enamel, and gold leaf.

"Hey Doc, give me a half hour or so and I'll help you and Rosie wash all this garbage off in the hot tub."

The Doctor took up Jack's hand and brushed the stuff off his palm. His fingers moved slowly. He scraped his nails over nerve endings, watching for physiological reaction; pressed and poked with his fingers, forcing Jack to push back. Jack's responses came with an insufferable _I know what you're up to_ smile. He smiled back, enigmatic and intentionally bewildering. When he had satisfied himself that warmth, elasticity, and colour were coming back to Harkness's skin, he clenched the man's hand in a firm grip and wrapped his hand over his bicep, forcing a response. The TARDIS still supported Jack, easing the strain as his body mended, and she would continue monitoring him; but Jack was starting to heal.

Strange how he felt no guilt as he checked his patient's recovery timeline and then went a little beyond. He felt relief and satisfaction. Grateful. And more than a little chuffed with himself.

He made room for Rose to lean over Jack and drop a kiss on the man's lips.

"It was a good thing for us that you spotted those guns."

"Especially this little baby. If I hadn't— "

"If you hadn't thrown my instructions in my face, pretty boy, which you'd planned to do anyway —" the captain had sense enough to blush, he noticed with a smirk, " — one of us probably would not be here." 

He was certain Rose would have come out of it unharmed regardless of the outcome for Jack and him and the slaver.

Jack Harkness, sodding hero.

Jack was going to be fine. He'd sensed the vitality already flowing back into the man when he'd made a show of examining him physically, and the strength of the timelines he saw backed up his assessment. Right now, though, Rose still needed the physical reassurance of seeing Jack mending. And he needed a shower. The explosion had been closer to the grotto than he'd remembered. Bits of the statues had gotten everywhere and were starting to drive him spare, especially the fragments of gold leaf **.**

As if it were an afterthought he stopped his puttering around, turned to Jack and said, "When you're feeling up to it, maybe you could teach Rose firearms basics. Ask the TARDIS for something that'll do for her." He knew they both were staring at him, but he kept his eyes on Harkness. "The practice range is four levels down, to the right; the ship will lead you to it and provide what you require. Make sure Rose can hit her targets dead-on; I don't want to have to deal with the aftermath of any real kind of damage, Jack, it's very undistinguished for the last of the Time Lords to be caught out bawling like a baby. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Captain Harkness 'cos I'm depending on you, just like always." The man blinked twice then nodded at him. "Fantastic!"

Jack was totally gobsmacked. That would make him two for two— _if_ he was enough of a smug bastard to be keeping count. Which of course he was. Captain Jack needed to get to know gobsmacked a little more intimately.

"I'm going to take a shower and change into something less _Age of Aquarius_. Rose, since you will insist on staying, feel free to indulge or chastise the captain to your heart's delight – it's your call."

Rose Tyler eavesdropped. Did ever since she'd come along with him; probably longer since she was so good at it. Sometimes it saved their lives, sometimes it made him listen more closely to what he was saying, sometimes it annoyed the hell out of him. It all evened out, so he didn't complain. Jack Harkness… well, a big part of a Time Agent's job was to eavesdrop through time and space. Jack was good, but Rose was better, and the man never seemed to catch on to her. The Doctor had superior sight and hearing, plus senses that the Humans couldn't begin to understand; he didn't have to hide in out-of-the-way crannies and shadowed corners and eavesdrop. He wouldn't have done anyway… Time Lord after all… but sometimes a little finessing was called for. The Medical Bay was soundproof. As the door closed behind him he pressed his foot back against it to keep it cracked open and listened unashamedly as Rose told the Captain how deeply she'd come to love him —

"You bloody unthinking friggin' stupid man! You might have—no!—shut your hole, Jack Harkness! You could have been killed and it would have been totally completely all your own bloody fault!"

— paying close attention, as usual, to what Rose and Jack said, and how they expressed so much to each other without speaking it out loud or telepathically as his people had. This way they had of saying something important without, or perhaps more accurately _despite_ , speaking was a new kind of silence to him. So different than the silent speeches and self-righteous mumbling that had anchored his life growing up and even as he ran away, however long he'd strained the cable, until empty space and raw silence replaced it.

He let the door ease shut, cutting him off from Jack's reply. Cutting him off from the sheer ebullient humanness of his companions shouting their love at each other. He tipped his head against the door, listened with only his ear, and could hear nothing. But that was okay. He hadn't just been growing accustomed to this new silence, he'd learnt to welcome its reverberations through soundproof doors, subtle looks, hip-checks and sharp elbows in the side, and, now, whole dialogs unvoiced. He could read the language his companions spoke to each other and, more and more, what they spoke at him. He was mastering it.

He headed down the corridor to his rooms and a long hot shower. His lips quivered into a smile. The soundless hum of his TARDIS was background harmony to the joy in his mind.

**→⏣←**


	4. But it's Jack's Fault Really

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Probability theory says Jack is dreaming; and if so, he wouldn't want to spoil it by making himself wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is M/M. Honestly, it's scifiangel's fault even more than Jack's. Bloose may sigh for our old days (me too, bloose), and because she's always been fantastic she'll nod, maybe roll her eyes, and say, _Another experiment, right?_
> 
> Jack is getting emotionally and physically close to a telepath, which will affect their intimate conversation. It is straightforward-- upper and lower case differences, and easy to follow:  
>  _{'THIS IS THEIR TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION'}_  
>  Jack's private thoughts are _in italics_ , as conventional. But sometime he buries them so deep the Doctor wouldn't find them if he went looking. _( shhh-- because some things are better left hidden under a banana grove)_

_But it's Jack's Fault Really_

Long fingers cool in his hair. Through his hair, cool. Nails scrape his scalp by chance, short nails accidental long strokes. Light, almost weightlessly light. And the feel and whiff of Time. It feels grand but he'd better move before he gets yanked out of the way so the Doctor can reach that fried _doohicky_ that they have to try to fix, the, the-uh …

the…?

Wait.

Last he checked he was in his room in his bed alone. How can this be accidental?

He snorts. It's just popped into his imagination so clear and perfect: the eyebrow, the _dareya_ in the Doctor's eyes. An explanation that's mostly bluster, spoken in that incongruous Northern dialect that the alien has adopted to throw the hounds off the scent: _Sorry if I woke you Harkness, I was on my way to the library and I tripped and happened to fall into your room and land on your bed_.

Nah. The Doctor is mad and navigation-challenged but not thoroughly loopy unless he's been drugged.

He doesn't move. Probability theory says he's dreaming, so he shouldn't spoil it by making himself wake up yet, should he. After all, what are the chances?

But then he kicks himself in the head where it should do the most good. _Harkness don't wimp out! You've never been more than passing acquaintance with probability and you know how theories always make you itch like mosquitoes. As the old Agency drinking song goes,_ _When you catch yourself coming and going you're neither crazy nor insane_.

So expecting anything and nothing he cracks open an eye. There's nothing in front of him that he doesn't remember being there before he got to sleep. He checks with the eyes in the back of his head— and they'd go wide if they physically existed! _Goddess_ , behind him!

Behind him is a mirage.

He concentrates on those marvellous long fingers on his neck and crossing his shoulder like his scalp, lighter than molting goose down on the air, not quite shiver-making but delightful. Then he feels _oh!_ on the ticklish inside skin of his elbow—and it is all shivery down his arm. He holds himself perfectly still. The sensation is repeated, whispering crown to fingertips. Repeated. Repeated again, and his brain needs a moment to boot up and process.

 _Hokay_.

Repeated again makes it feel not accidental especially now that Doc's fingers… not dawdling, they're whadyacallit? drawn-out and, like it's measured, like...

_Hello_

Lingering

Lingering, yes, like accidentally intentional.

Or intentionally accidental. He wonders which way the Doctor would dismiss it if pressed, eh, wouldn’t put either past that exasperating alien. With one of his hot snarky _DON'T CHALLENGE ME HARKNESS!_ looks followed by that _Buy~Me~A Drink~First_ gorgeous-ass exit. But let him just TRY to explain this away with tripped and fell _._

Whatever.

No, that is definitely… he is… that's …

playful is the only word for it, playful, that way he's touching—

WAIT.

Him?

Him the Doctor fucking _playful_?

Okay that's not nice anymore, lousy touch telepath knows exactly what it's doing to him! But before he'll let himself harden— _Hot damn, the bastard is good at this!_ — before he hardens past the point of no return he needs to know he needs his body needs

"What the —? Doc— Oh _Goddess_!"

He really needs to know.

 _{'TEASING SONOFABITCH DO YOU INTEND TO BONE ME OR TEASE ME THEN SHUT ME DOWN?!'}_ he thinks at the Doctor with a dirk knife to cut into the Time Lord's impressive mental shielding.

"Don’t tease me, Doctor, don’t. The mood I'm in I'll either fucking deck you or launch one of us out the front door."

"Not teasing."

— whispered against his neck where only the tiny short hairs can hear and stand to attention and salute, and he thinks just maybe he'll let himself believe —

"Not anymore, Jack Harkness. Promise."

 _Why now_ , he wonders. 

"Doctor, why now?"

"Why do you think, Captain?"

"Think?" _Goddess_ he'll get to the whys when he isn't so busy getting himself seduced! But something he's been hiding for months whispers _Could it be more, please Goddess can it be everything?_ He buries it too deep for a nosy telepath to find, fills the hole, and plants a banana grove.

He keeps his eyes closed just in case. If it turns out after all, that he is only delirious from a serious injury during one of Doc's typical road trips he'd rather not have hope shattered yet. If he isn't, he'll let the wantonly firing nerve endings in his neck and his very sympathetic cock savour these few moments more of heaven before the rest of him catches up, or the Doctor goes all fucking _prudy_ apologetic on him.

He stretches back, giving his maybe-delusion unrestricted free access to his throat. Feels soft lips. Not-delusion lips. SUPREMELY talented not-delusion lips. Heaven is in pure sensation and that's oh that's—

He moans, long, loud, like the animal he is.

He's not the only one getting his animal on, yeah, sounds like both Doc and he have just discovered that his Adam's apple is the toggle switch between their cocks.

"Stay there don't move, just keep on doing that, yes, that! That that that! My Sweet Mistress of Time!"

The Doctor laughs. He loves the sound of it, maybe as much as he loves the schizophrenic manic-depressive beautiful sexy cause.

"More, Doc. _Yuuuhhhp_ , there—oh, there too… "

 _{'KEEP GOING'_ } he wills the telepathic Time Lord {' _DO IT JUST LIKE THAT LOWER—YES!'}_

"Yes! Lower now!" he repeats out loud and loudly— emphasis to get the point across.

This could be a good time for a wisecrack about Doc's patient scrape and suck and nip because in his opinion at this point patience is uncalled for and impolite and probably dishonest. He might get something nicely smacked or stuffed for his contrariness. But isn't there also the chance he could lose the Doctor if he doesn't let him lead this the way he wants it?

It strikes him just how much of himself he's chosen to let the telepath take.

He rides the swell of their desire keeping his wisecrack to himself. The prize for his self-control is the sight of the most splendid blue that the Goddess ever created pulsating with lust that's finally driven to find satisfaction. Non-Human carnality, but there's a very Human need burning— For him! "Doc," he purrs and pulls him by his elbows.

"Shhh," as a lean forearm presses down on his larynx. It doesn't choke him so much as scream control freak. On the other hand, the way those cool dry lips have been doing a bang-up job of keeping him in his place, _Goddess_ , he could easily get used to being controlled like this.

_{'BANG-UP, JACK? HAVE I REDUCED THE SMOOTH-TALKING CAPTAIN HARKNESS TO BAD PUNS?'}_

Amused laughter. Its raw sensuality makes every short hair on his body squeal and his teeth itch for the first taste of firm succulent Time Lord.

_{'AND THE AWARD FOR MOST LICENTIOUS USE OF DISHONOURABLY PURLOINED INTERNAL MONOLOG **EVER** GOES TO THE TIME LORD WITH THE HARD-ON PRESSING INTO MY ASS-CHEEK'} _

Doc's acceptance speech is a prod and grind. He grins at the possibilities. He bets Doc does too.

A leg captures his legs. Not merely entangling into. CAPTURING. Seizing and securing and raising the flag, among other things he's already raised today, Doctor's orders to the impatient. Although entangling could lead them to a lot more—

" _Dooocccc!"_

"Get hold of yourself Harkness, it's not like you've never been groped there like that before."

"True, Doc," he grins. "But who'd've thought that an uptight Time Lord would do that?"

Doc gives him a look he can't read. 

"Or that!" he sort of screeches at the _on second thought not so uptight_ Time Lord. 

" _UPTIGHT_ , Jack?" The Doctor smirks.

He rolls his eyes, pulls out of the Doctor's hold long enough to take a quick nip at his chin, then insinuates himself back into the Time Lord's possession like he'd never escaped. "As you were, Doc," he smiles.

Short scrape and tickle nails bisect him from sternum to diaphragm like he's a holiday turkey _._ He sucks in his gut and shows off his six-pack he does, he's very pleased with it so why not. Doc thrumps out some kind of rhythm on his pack, taking his time to enjoy the tone of his tone. _{'YES I'M FIT. I'M BUFF. I'M BEAUTIFUL. GET ON WITH IT DOCTOR, I'M BEAUTIFUL LOTS OF OTHER PLACES TOO'}_

"Don't stop," his voice tells those nails.

They don't stop.

They don't stop.

They keep on don't stopping. ~~~~

"Holy crap, Doctor!"

"Don't you like what I'm doing to you, Jack?" Smug bastard.

"Like it?? Doc, you fucking strung and cocked me like I'm Green Arrow's god-dammed recurve bow!"

"So… you like it." The Doctor sounds tentative.

"YES DOC I LIKE IT!" He takes a deep breath, it burns all its way down and he thinks maybe he hasn't been remembering to breathe like he should. "It feels, I feel… I love it, what you're doing to me, Doctor honestly I'll love it all."

A smile. He smiles back. Fingers start again across his naked skin, new places, no nails, no scrape and tickle, but IN NO WAY tentative. Tender. Wonderful new torment. Fantastic new torment!

Still too slow new torment.

"That's awfully sweet and tender, darlin'. Is this date night, Sugar Pie, Cuddle-bundle?" He's making sure to enunciate irritatingly just in case the Doctor is listening with only his ears now. "What's the grand plan? Do dinner and a movie come next, _mon petit_ walnut whip?"

"Petit?"

Smug is back. Smug is good.

The poke of Doc's poker is promising.

The raised eyebrow is obscene. He answers with dimples.

"By the way _,_ are you planning on doing something not so sweet and tender about these hard-ons any time soon, hmm?" He bats his eyelashes prettily. " _Whadyasay_ Doc——

 _"GODDESS!!!"_ he jolts.

"FINALLY! _Supreme Goddess_ of Time _FINALLY!_ " He shouts, he shakes, he grins oh how he grins! The Doctor chuckles. He pulls himself together and grabs at the first bit of Time Lord he finds, secures his claws and hangs on. " _Devilfuckmeorange_ you bastard, finally!"

Laughter so deep, so animal he almost comes from that alone.

"More, Doc."

_{'SHHH'}_

_{'PLEASE'}_

_"Hush!"_

"Hush?" He still has control enough to respond with rational dispassion. "You try being politely quiet, Doctor, when someone is playing you like he's tuning a bagpipe."

Laughter answers him again, a different kind of laughter. It's the most beautiful sound he thinks he's ever heard from the Doctor. Happy. Unchained. Horny as he and _hallelujah!_ finally eager to do something about it.

"There's still so much Boeshane male physiology I want to explore, Jack Harkness, but I'll stop if you want?"

"Hell no."

"Fantastic!"

The Time Lord is grinning, he doesn't even have to look to know it. The Doctor is happy getting him off? How _sa-weeet_ would life be if he could have that sound of happiness in his ears whenever he needs it. Yeah, and around his cock.

A soft kiss into his hair.

 _Hokay that's weird._ _T_ _hat's like the way Doc is with Rose._

Rosie had told him that Doc's been like that with her from _go_. He'd figured it had been the Doctor's sorry-ass way of getting out the _rip-his-hearts-out_ feelings about Rose that he wouldn't maybe couldn't say with words at first. But this doesn't make sense.

 _Harkness you brainless silly sonofabitch what if — noNo (_ _shhh— !??)_

He buries the rest of that thought so deep he might have made a hole in his sock, then he erects ramparts around the banana grove.

The Doctor's lips start at his temple, travel his jaw — his mouth tries to get a hold of those lips, Doctor won't give him the chance — on his throat, begin following the route his fingernails had taken... tracing their exact route he realizes, covering the knifepoint line of exquisite fire they just engraved into his skin with dry ice and a thoroughness only a perfect memory can pull off. Damned arrogant alien has to go about it methodically, does he? Follow-the-number carnality. An architecture of seduction. All of everything Doc does guaranteed to drive him batshit crazy.

Maybe not. Maybe he cares enough to want to learn him like so, completely and with all of his senses.

Visual sense - _check_

Somatosensory sense - _check_

Gustatory sense – _—(Oh Doctor baby there's so much I'm looking forward to teaching you using that one, about me and about you, but mostly about us!!)—_ \- _check_

Time sense -

_. . . {'TIME SENSE?'}_

_{'CHECK'}_ the Time Lord grins.

Oh he's not going to last!

"If you're so disappointed in how my grand plan's progressing Harkness, how come you can't stop grinning?"

He grins wider and gets a good hold on the Doctor's ass, both hands, ten fingers, hell, he'd use his tongue and teeth if they'd reach.

Lightly then not quite so lightly, well, damn close to perfect, wet now all tongue and spit and teeth and breath cold enough to make him judder— or maybe it's burning hot? But patient still patient more patient than he, absurdly unfairly son-of-a-bitch patient almost cruelly—

 _"Goddess,_ Supreme all-knowing Unbraider of Time! _Dammitdammit-YES-fuckYES!_ Doctor!"

"Hmmmm?"

"Humming that way, down there doesn't help, thanks."

Innocently: _{'IT DOESN'T?'}_

Innocent looks cute on the Doctor to anyone who doesn't know him. "Innocent my ass," he retorts out loud and gets slapped exactly where he wants.

That animal laughter again, joyful around him, he'll do anything for it not to stop.

_Owned by a Time Lord, Harkness and you never thought you'd get to Heaven!_

_{'JACK—'}_

{' _I DIDN'T INTEND TO CHUCK THAT OUT THERE, DOC, BUT SINCE YOU CAUGHT IT—_ ** _YES HEAVEN_** _— BEING WITH YOU IN EVERY WAY IS HEAVEN BUT THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO ARGUE.'}_ Luckily for him the universe's champion masochist is less inclined to give him argument than deep throat.

The Doctor is every bit as impressive as he likes to brag.

Tight. Hot. Deliberate. Lots of tongue. Lots of throat. Lots of erotic happy hungry males noise. Then Doc's mouth sets out to travel the scenic route to his mouth, and by the time that resourceful alien tongue gets to his lowest rib he's absolutely certain that Time itself had been told to piss off. He's feeling... maybe he has been for a while now yes, he's pretty certain that he's been feeling it for some time, but not some objective time or even subjective time the way he's been used to before space went all soft and gooey with a Time Lord's kiss, so call this whateverthehell's been going on some hickory-dickory-Doc time later. His internal clock is totally fucked up. And he's thrumming everywhere— his insides and his outsides and his... WAIT. He tries counting and comes up with more sides than he thought he had. ~~~~

Maybe he hears so he listens, all of his body listens and all of his conscious mind listens and all that he is listens. He embraces the Doctor and listens. He stops listening to give his preter-conscious mind a go at it but gets a fine bit of groping in while he's at it. Music floods the universe he listens and thinks this ubiquitous _Grandness_ just _has to_ _be_ the _musica unversalis,_ and something of the young innocent plebe still inside the skeptic marvels that the ancient myth is true. He's been a Time Agent and a rebel in a dirty Corps and he's been with the Doctor many months nonlinear, it doesn't surprise him that the symphonies of the universe at its most beautiful are something close to what's been in the back of his mind since he came aboard the TARDIS. He is kissed and caressed by the Doctor and caresses and kisses the Doctor and whistles the music of the spheres. "Catchy tune, Doc."

The Doctor sputters and huffs loud enough to drown out the flood of music and pulls back from him. He sighs into the resounding Doctor-imposed silence and pictures a universe like Boeshane honey cooling on the hive. The spatio-temporal matrix is a bit splintered, he thinks, after all the primordial old thing is well worn with usage. But the honey is thick and golden, no, amber like Rosie's eyes.

This is the image he holds in his mind as he follows Doc's physical withdrawal and psychic shutdown, and drops a tender undemanding kiss on the crown of his head. It's so easy to channel the Doctor as he is with Rosie, he guesses, because the universe was built on amber sunshine and ice blue starfire.

His gambit works. Placated and profoundly secure or, um, gobsmacked into surrender as Rosie probably would say, the Doctor touches him again. Kisses him again, hard and long—it takes up forty-two seconds, he can count again.

"Doctor?" He's not sure what he's asking. But the answer has to be in eyes that are and are not blue, and the man who is not a man and yet is so Human.

Then the Doctor offers him a taste of that Boeshane honey he'd apparently just edited them into, the chunk of Reality that they and Rose inhabit. This segment of their time line is hot and sweet and gritty, less like honey than Mexican hot chocolate pouring; a piquant swirl of something becoming something else, a pause in the time flux. It's only a little bit of his little bit, he understands the Doctor must meticulously shield all of his infinite possibility to protect him. But he is moved by the Time Lord's gesture.

( _shhh_ _— He's plenty damn certain that Time or the universe or even the Goddess is playing out the Doctor's will, or love, or something else he's still holding back from him — but hell, call it his Time signature, Harkness, Time Lord 'n all, the title's gotta be more than rampaging ego. And nothing this crusty old SOB could say or do will convince him otherwise._ )

_(shhh — for some dickory-Doc time the Doctor is his His! His bit of the universe to know is the Doctor's lips, the Doctor's teeth and tongue, the Doctor's hands. The Doctor's strokes.)_

Dragging suction. Suction so mind-blowing—

" _Fuck-YES_!!"

— exquisite torque drag between his thighs cruelly wonderfully patient, patiently patient, drives him crazier with need than he's ever been before. Still he finds enough presence of mind to thank the Goddess for Doc's two-day scruff.

"Jack, look at me, let me see your eyes."

He looks at him… at that blue like he's never seen, never anything but hungered for since the Blitz.

"All the time we've wasted, Jack, when there's so much we can do—"

"—with hands," as he helps the Doctor position him.

"—and mouths and teeth and tongues."

{'AND COCKS'} they grin _{'AND TIME'}_

He almost sings for the cold burning joy of the Doctor's long finger, fingers. Cool and patient still, tender, careful.

_Careful? What the—?_

He pushes back hard, grinds against the knuckle, groans— no that's not he— his breath hitches, knuckles grind grind push, and he's groaning too. Pain not pain fills him quickly only not quick enough maybe just what he needs.

{' _JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERS_ '} he has to snigger. In his mind and around his earlobe Doc sniggers too then tells him to shut up.

The Doctor's lips on his neck again. His name on the Doctor's lips. Then no more words he's done with them and done with all the teasing and lush lascivious laughter they evoke in each other, as much as he's loved it. There's only moving, and throughout his body sensations crashing and the feeling of being alive and ~~~~

feelings well up overwhelm panic— _can't feel this Doc will sense Doc will know_. He exhales sharply, tidying up his ramparts.

{' _JACK_?'} "Jack? Are you good?"

"Mmm-hhhmm." He grins salaciously and nods, confirming. If the Doctor can read a wayward outbreath he can't trust himself even to think quietly.

Sounds with no words then, movement sound, wet sound, wanton skin on skin noises. Hearts beating, faster. Rich hunger sounds like big-ass tillers furrowing dry naked fields of clay and rock, animal growls and yowls, no more sweetheart nipping serious biting pulls pained hisses and sharp grunts out of burning throats and he's loving it LOVING IT! Loves the symphony playing some _wherewhen_ he decides to call distance, loves the fireworks filling this _wherewhen_ he'll call attached between his and the Doctor's _now,_ spiking in his blood.

No not fireworks, shouting, he recognizes the voices, voice — _it's his?_ _fuckitfuckitfuckit!_ — he could ruin the rest of his life or make it, now, and he Jack Harkness the man who toasted death with an inferior martini knows he is terrified of this feeling not to feel but to make the Doctor feel. Inside his impregnable ramparts, far inside and under the secure banana grove, sadder sadder than all the sad words set in a stack, someone cries _Goddess don't let me ruin it!_

He'll hide the words in a frenzy of actions, by the gods! Teeth and hands to concentrate on, sharp slapping, deep bruising biting. Cocks, hot breath and pungent sweat. Three hearts he counts them, he counts because.. whatever. Their two cocks, they count oh baby YES hot tight burning yes _YES_. One Doctor, one whateverthehell Doc sees that makes him good enough to be fucked by a Time Lord.

 _Mistress_ _Lady Time_ is a wanton trollop but she's doing exactly as she's told, Doctor's orders of course of course, control freak. And there will be

_{'HARKNESS'}_

no WORDS in this union of flesh and muscle, pounding blood and sweat; only sounds of Doc and him fucking—

"Harkness, you're pretty chatty for someone who keeps saying no words… stop the _bloody_ thinking."

"Doc—"

Two quick hard thrusts

"Fuck yeah!"

"Fuck yeah, but hush your gob and your blabberbrain NOW, Jack Harkness…" A new laugh. {'ONE MORE ORDER FROM YOUR DOCTOR'} 

The Doctor's on the attack, seems like, wielding tongue and teeth and hands and fingers and cock to short out his cognitive centers, but the Goddess knows he's not that easy to—

 **{** **}**

no words, Movement

only Movement

_only—_

Feelings— _no!_

_only_

only Need

Then only Sensation

only Ecstasy


	5. Sharing the Blame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They conjugate him: he moves she moves they move I move we move. Her mouth and his cock, together, they conjugate him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is M/M/F
> 
> So many thanks to scifiangel for emergency beta of this part of her present. This is the first I've tried on my own to construct something with so many tabs and slots to put together, but she said everything fit.
> 
> ~
> 
> As in the last chapter:  
>  _{'THE DOCTOR'S TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION WITH JACK AND ROSE IS IN CAPS'}  
>  Jack's direct thoughts are in italics  
> ( shhh-- These are the thoughts Jack is burying so deep in what he thinks of as his fortressed banana grove that he's sure the Doctor will never find them)  
> _
> 
> ~
> 
> Jack is remembering the 1967 single by The American Breed: "Bend Me, Shape Me" by Scott English and Larry Weiss (1966)

Sharing the Blame

He's nuzzled into the Time Lord's chest. His fingers wander contentedly through the sparse band of soft hairs on Doc’s belly from navel to groin, circle the resting physiology and return, begin wandering again. An occasional groan of pleasure vibrates beneath him, and soft lips slip over his hair like ending punctuation on satiated kisses. The Doctor's cool fingertips wind and loop over his ass languidly, but the assurance with which they move makes him pretty certain he's being tagged and documented in the Doctor's language— Doc's a tireless control freak even after coming hard more times than his jacket has pockets. 

The leg wrapped over him since their last go at each other, casually if not very subtly securing him to the Doctor, slides away. The bony knee that's been burrowed beneath him long enough to have become comfortable jerks his body up with a muscled ease, and he finds himself on his side facing the wall.

Flipped like a flapjack. Well not quite but almost. His ass is near enough to the Doctor's hand to waggle itself into the grasp of those talented fingers, near enough to the Doctor's cock to push back on and clench.

But he doesn't.

He's back on his side with the Time Lord behind him, but getting there was no way like the other times.

He thinks of three things he can do: kick the jerk out of his bed and his room, get up and walk out himself, pretend he is asleep and see what the Doctor will do next. Before he can decide, though, lips realize against his, soft lips like the Doctor's but smaller, warmer. New lips. He's suddenly wide awake and incredibly keen to know this touch of warm moist satin.

 _Gone._ _Damn._

_Back, they're…_

Rose's lips are back on his. They've returned like a butterfly, alighting with another weightless quick brush that leaves a bit of nectar. Another. Another not so quickly gone. He remembers this honey-infused satin touch from his first night aboard the TARDIS, in a dream full of spectacularly detailed sensory images after the spectacularly sensory detail-empty Blitz. His tongue darts out to sample the addicting taste he's never actually gotten.

A fragrance he remembers helping her pick out at an alien market caresses his face with a fragile almost flowery vanilla presence and that's enough to entice him to open his eyes to see her. Her hair tickles his vision and his nose. He blinks fast a couple of times then closes his eyes tightly because something besides her fragrance and silky hair has gotten into them, so it's a jolt of more than one kind when he feels the contact sparks of two fingernails dragging up the center of his chest. Rosie's fingers are not large or chill like Doc's, but they're just as wicked with the torture. Maybe more wicked—when one breaches his lips he moans around it and discovers he can't stop.

It doesn't help that he can't help wondering if she's wondering if he's thinking about what he's trying not to think about and pretty much failing. To be embarrassingly honest with himself, that was why he slammed his eyes shut in the first place. But if Ms. Tyler can get away with showing a complete lack of clothing, shouldn't he get away with looking at it?

Warm satin skin and cool somewhat hairy muscle. A perfect pair of mismatched legs entangle his, drag them, get friendlier… quite a bit friendlier. They start to twist him around, pulling and bending his limbs like they're following a poorly translated how-to manual for a cheap folding recliner and _fuckit!_ they're posing him like some damn action figure toy! He opens his eyes and starts to snark, "What am I, chopped liver?" when a palm smacks him lightly. Two fingers seal his lips and the tip of his nose is kissed. Then it's back to being treated like _Cirque du Soleil_ Ken.

A song line pops into his head ~ _Bend me shape me_ ~ He hasn't heard that song since he dropped into the 20th century to see The Yardbirds at the Aragon Ballroom and got sidetracked to WCFL, hell of a party that was, lasted a good oh it went on for days he seems to remember. _Bend me, shape me_ , _something something_ , he thinks, _dumdum dumdum,_ the driving beat pulls the chords out of his eidetic memory . . . _A D-G-A D-G-A D-G-A . . . Yeah that's it, bend me shape me, anyway you want me._ The pounding rhythm was built for the single explicit purpose of driving everyone including the dead to get up and dance. But it's no match for plump, satin-smooth, naked Rose Tyler breasts optimally situated for maximum physiological and hormonal effect! ~ _long as you love me_ _it's all right~_

Hands grip his ~ _Bend me shape me_ ~ fingers wrap through his _RosieRosie_ and tease his palms. Another smack, then those exquisite fingers caress his body as if the owner is determined to learn all of him by Braille. When Rose finishes, the Doctor holds one of his legs on the bed, bends the other and uses it to fold him over on himself toward Rosie. She smiles sweetly and her warm fingers skate around his knee and up the back of his thigh. _Yeah,_ _bend me shape me_ _,_ _dumdum dumdum_.

"Hey, Jack."

"Hey yourself sweetheart." How cute is this! The kids are twisting him into Rose's favourite yoga stretch. He's more than limber enough for a spinal twist. "There's no need to hold me down, I'll show you both just how flexible I—

"Rosie!! Oh you little—!!"

She giggles and breaks into that smile of hers. He catches the Doctor rolling his eyes. It takes an alien to pull off a world-weary eye-roll together with a shit-eating grin, and he thinks things could be starting to get another kind of interesting. But no, they release him **.**

Rose's long waves tease his face again, a cocktail of alien perfume and human female musk teases his mind. Butterfly wings alight and there is no flitting this time, Rose's perfect satin lips remain against his long enough for him to want to sign a lease, move in, and order furnishings **.** _~you got the power~_

Aw, gone again, but he does not feel abandoned, _Goddess_ no, not with the Doctor's lips against the back of his shoulder like that.

Lingering. 

Yes. His lips remain. They don't, they don't leave. 

Doc's lips linger, soft, cool, tender, and he thinks he thinks _Divine Goddess of Time_ he can't help himself but think that maybe this is what being found and brought home to heal might feel like.

Now what the HELL was that supposed to—

_~anyway you want me, long as you love me It's alright bend me shape me anyway you want me, you got the power~_

mean?

That darn chorus, he realizes, has gotten stuck in his head.

And now hotdamn NOW his vanished golden butterfly 

Whoa.

 _MY golden butterfly? ( shhh— Just between you and me, Harkness. . . are you meshugana??!)_

Her lips not just back butbut fluttering over the tip of his cock, _dear Goddess!_ down his . . . all over his . . .

Rose's tongue begins to dance over him with wide ribbons and sharp-pointed spirals, and he might have made some noise, and he's sure he's begun radiating heat and musk. His pheromones aren't at full power, he'll do something about that when Rosie's and Doc's olfactory receptors send out invitations to him to come meet the neighbours. 

Soft low laughter.

A whisper.

Giggles.

"Don't egg him on."

More giggles, louder. He ups the wattage a bit to make his argument. Rosie moans. The Doctor _tsks_ , he gives him the dimpled smile Doc's still pretending he can resist and gets nipped, hard. Then Doc's lips cool the sting.

_~dumdum dumdum dumdum dumdum~_

Doc moves. Skin slides on skin. A long leg rubs against his, traveling the scenic route; the bony knee and toes in particular take some switchbacks over the very erogenous terrain. Inner thigh over inner thigh, tremendously sensitive skin along tremendously sensitive skin— he knows exactly what this is leading to and holds his breath— close tickle of short hairs, brief sting of chill viscosity on happily over-stimulated skin as the alien cock moves into place.

Hard and hot behind him, against him offering, slides into him when he signals assent and begins to move. Slow and steady nudging, warming them both up to the featured performance. " _Goddess,_ yes Doc," he murmurs sloppily around a mouthful of fingers.

Two of the three fingers crowding his mouth now are definitely Rose's. Her hand cloaks his face. Her fragrance clouds his brain. Her lips—

Beyond the Goddess's captivating smile is vacuum all dressed up in satin Kevlar!

Rose's mouth works him, snug and slick _oh!_. . .works him, hot and tight… works him, works him with a Rose Tyler will. And her soft waves… no not soft now, needles stabbing into the most sensitive parts of his balls like no one before ever has with only bleached hair and sweet affection and one wicked wicked hand all over his body like she owns it. And those two naughty fingers riding his tongue, making him suck them and digit number three which has no choice but to ride along. She knows she's making him want to eat her and he could scream from the sensations she is inflicting and the images she's suggesting in his head—

the images _THEY_ are suggesting. Never in his strange and wayward life has he been so slowly and thoroughly taken. _Devilfuckmeorange,_ he flings the joyful prayer to the Goddess, _thanks Babe, I can die happy now, but I'd really like a lot more time with my executioners._

Laughter in his head. He wants to damn the telepath, but a wave of amber-eyed amusement makes him smile; then he laughs too. He should hold his cards closer to the vest, but there are such wonderful things to concentrate on at the moment that the effort of digging under the banana grove is crap nuisance _._

Musky sweat slickens the skin moving against his back and ass and mixes with his. This lusty cocktail they are making slips into his crack and leaves a cool puddle on Doc where the two of them are joined. He can feel and hear the squish every time Doc moves. Runnier and lightly perfumed drips off Rose's breasts over his sensitized skin; every drop of her that makes it down through the underbrush shoots an electric bolt into the base of his cock.

Hard and thick not-pain slowly pumping. Tight kisses full of nectar, soft firm drawing him out of him. Doc's using Time Lord mojo to drill him with temporal brakes on, Rosie's sucking him inside out. " _Fuck!_ " he wants to shout, but the fingers in his mouth stop him up.

They conjugate him: he moves she moves they move I move we move. Her mouth and his cock, together, they conjugate him.

 _Goddess_ he has to hold— 

Rose pushes his groping hand away. Her knee brushes his gut, his rib cage. Her spit chills on his cock.

"No—wha Rose? I only wanted to hold—"

Doc has been doing the most wonderful things to him, but he has to stop and find out what he did that upset Rose. He eases off the hard cock carefully and tries to go after her, but the Doctor grips his shoulder, twists him flat, and plants his ass into the mattress. Caught in the Time Lord's sights, by that look that can freeze even a tropical hurricane, he stutters out a muddled attempt at explanation and apology.

“What did I Doctor I'm really sorry I Rosie I swear I would never unless he says and you want—" _Fuckit_ , he can't stop babbling!! "I…I misunderstood I just thought but no sorry I apologize—"

He's mortified. He's wretched. He's he's he's—

Rose's mouth is soft and firm and open against his, he sighs into the sweet invitation. Her lust is slick and cool, and just a bit sticky as it smears all over his ribcage while she wiggles through the kiss. He wonders if he can get away with never washing there again.

Rose kisses the tip of his nose and eyelids, and rolls her tongue into his ear. Smiles at him. . . not that one, the soft one.

He leaps into her eyes, determined to get it right get it perfect get it drawn-from-eidetic-memory correct. ( _shhh—_ _Polished Earth Baltic amber. Honey made by Boeshane 5-winged bees. Virgin Brandy. Fire agates. Cognac diamonds. The cognac from that little place near the Chateau Frontenac— if he took her back there it should match when the Quebec November sunset kisses her through the centuries-old glass)_

"I said, Which way, Jack?"

"Wha?" He hasn't a clue how long he's been away, standing on the cobblestone walk in winter watching her sip cognac, how long she's been poised like that near his breastbone, scraping it with a fingernail and smiling down at him. No, smirking. 

Doc's fingers graze Rose's hip. As she turns to look up he sees the birth of a smile that once upon an invisible space ship had stopped his heart. The Time Lord leans in and kisses her smile into something an eighteen-year-old almost-virgin traveling with a sexually repressed alien wouldn't have reason to use. He watches.

He watches. The kiss is volatile like the midwifing of lightning storms and tsunamis and galaxies; nature's raw and unqualified passion is generated as he watches, with the promise of something more to come. He sees everything important he's known since he watched the Doctor dance Rose around the console. He feels it in his cock and his balls too and for a moment thinks he's gonna come just from the beauty of their promise— No no, it’s seeing them naked that's doing this to him, their gorgeous bodies glistening under the TARDIS lighting, slick from their heat and quivering with hard passion, and _yeah_ the gloriously aroused cock preening in front of him.

The Doctor pulls back, and now HE is the one who Rose is kissing with bruising passion. A signature Rose Tyler promise, _Signed Sealed and Delivered_ —

Wait.

What the fuck is going on with his brain and all this forgotten rock n' roll? _It's a KISS, Harkness, you've been face-sucked so hard you can't breathe before_. Ah, but Rose Tyler! — _Goddess_ there's just no better way to die … well, maybe.

She smiles at him. It's a smile like she just gave Doc and he's back on top of that ship trying very hard not to trip and fall, only now he knows it couldn't be helped.

And then the compelling force of her is just _gone_. He feels her loss in the dimming of the room's light, when just before her gaze had heated the quanta into a palpable wave of burnished gold, like cognac through aged glass, and the November glow in her eyes had looked like promise. And he feels it in the chill through his skin where her body no longer touches his. It physically hurts, so it takes him a moment to realize, now Doc is leaning over to kiss him.

There's no sign of the barely controlled desire that Rose has just shared with him. Or the hunger that had exploded through Doc's body and mind into his the first time they fucked. Doc's eyes are soft, no that's wrong, the look he's giving him, the smile, is soft but his eyes thrill like… like what **?** The Boeshane sun at the exact moment after it cleared the horizon, the exact moment it became day on the peninsula. But the sun holding its breath between daybreak and daylight, as if it could simply _pause_ to scoff at natural law. This moment that he is seeing, that the Doctor is _allowing_ him to see, is whole, is _now_ resonating throughout time in the not-quite silvery shade of blue he's seen only ever in the Doctor's eyes. "Doctor…"

The Doctor blinks, and the singular blue timelessness of eternity is a violence of colour iced and flaming— cerulean, steel, scorched gunmetal, indigo, flashes of blinding sapphire.

The Doctor blinks, the vortex is calm and time is aging around them naturally again. Still, he can only stare into eyes that aren't eyes, but have to be because they're smiling at him and he is smiling back.

The Doctor grins.

Winks.

A voice {'WHICH WAY JACK?'} that may be the same one as before. Maybe not.

He frowns. _{'JACK CANNOT TAKE YOUR CALL RIGHT NOW, JACK IS...'}_ Jack is off in a completely different universe lost in almost but not quite silver blue infinity, because being lost has never felt safe, like this, before.

{'JACK?'}

{'LADY'S CHOICE'} he mumbles vaguely, bothered at the intrusion. He wants to stay in that universe the Time Lord pulled him into just a little longer.

{'GOOD ANSWER HARKNESS'} A fingernail vehemently insists itself down the outside of his leg, forcing, _damn,_ forcing him back from. . . from. . . anyway he's back in bed with Rosie and the Doctor— which to coin a phrase is _fantastic_ because, for one thing, Doc is kneeling between his legs and grinning down at him like a loon; and, for another, Rosie's hand. The loony S.O.B. makes a point of pressing his steel against him as he drags him by his ankles up the incline of his thighs. He hears himself whimper. Doc smirks while Rosie's fingers spread the fresh slickness that she and Doc made him make all over his cock.

Rose grabs his knee and swings a leg over him so she's kneeling over his gut, facing the Doctor. "There's no attractive way to do this," she complains as she wiggles backwards on hands and knees, toward his face.

"Don't mind her, Jack, she's fishing for compliments."

"Oi, you!" 

He wants to say that Rosie's got the most beautiful ass he's ever seen on a woman and Georgia O'Keefe would kill to paint what she's showing him, but her short hair is scraping his chin now and her scent surrounds him and it's hard enough to remember to breathe. When he finally gets words out, there's only one thing on his mind because he's desperate not to make any mistakes with either of them.

"May I kiss her?" he asks for permission hoarsely around Rosie's clit

"Thought you already were. If not, Harkness, you need refresher lessons."

Rose moans. "He doesn't need lessons, Doctor."

Rose Tyler is soft, tangy-sweet tasting just like her smell. Succulent. Her _everything_ tantalizes his brain. He drowns in her, in Rose Tyler he drowns happily.

She is grinding down _just perfectly_ and his mouth is happily feeding when the Doctor says "Need a mo'". Doc gets a good hold on him, lifts his ass and slides a pillow under, then he starts adjusting and fine-tuning angles and planes and congruity between the two of them. Rosie has stilled on top of him and her arms wrap around his body. She rolls her eyes like she's waiting for the control freak to be satisfied, but the Doctor is making him more comfortable.

Sometimes he _wants_ to feel the sweaty sticky bony-kneed somewhat hairy wrong-angled discomfort that means Doc is too juiced up on lust to remember to be a considerate lover.

"Oi, Doctor," she finally grumbles, "finish futzing with Jack and get on with it already!"

"In," he corrects her, "get in with it already."

He'd gotten used to the heat of their three bodies, so when Doc presses his cock between his cheeks he jerks up with a gasp—the desire that coats the head feels like it's been cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen. He's inadvertently nipped Rose, she squeals and pinches his bum. But she's making noises somewhere between giggle and moan so he guesses he doesn't have to apologize for that. He also guesses having his ass pinched by Rose Tyler is going to be one of his favourite things to make happen. Then he loses everything but the sensation of the turgid cock filling him completely. Doc's hands begin to work his package like he owns it, which okay he guesses the Time Lord does. Rosie's fingers join the Doc's _there_ , scraping and pinching him through his short hairs as she fidgets against his chest, which ain't bad to feel and watch, ain't bad at all. Soon she sits back and he gets another finger inside her; more Rose-flavoured heat fills his mouth and his mind.

"Wait," the Doctor says, stopping them from moving. "I'd never imagined," he says softly, "after I realized about the gas mask kid and the nanogenes, Jack, when I gave you the invitation wrapped around my threat, I didn't expect… Captain Jack Harkness, so much bigger on the inside." 

There is so much respect and pride in the Time Lord's statement he feels like crying, but he can't resist, not even with Rosie's delicious clit between his lips. "So're you, Doc."

"Later you both better be," Rose sniffs, "It takes a lot of patience to put up with the two of you, and a woman can be patient only so long."

He mumbles his promise around her and seals his answer with a kiss. She wiggles and kisses the tip of his cock then tilts her face up for another kiss from the Time Lord. "Told you he's just like you," he hears her whisper. "Nah," the Doctor objects quietly, "he's nowhere near as pig-headed when he's obviously wrong."

And then her mouth is around him again as he feasts on her. The Doctor begins to move in him with his careful roughness, putting those great leg muscles to almost better use than running them for their lives daily. He feels the Doctor in his mind, happy and horny as he is. He feels echoes of Rose approaching, she comes into clearer focus the longer they sinc.

 _~Bend me shake me~_ The beat thrumps in his head and pulses deep, racing with his blood. He uses the steady pounding rhythm to time his tongue's drive into Rose's center, deep deep, and to thumb her clit. She loves the rhythm, which she is echoing up and down his cock, and for one selfish moment he wants to let her take him along with her into rapture.

He hooks his heels behind the Doctor's shoulders. Now he has leverage. He also has Rose's cunt slammed against his face at the perfect angle for his hands to work both of her nipples while his mouth and teeth and tongue hit every place that she needs hit to keep her screaming.

The next time Doc starts back in he drives their bodies together with all the force he can use without throwing Rosie off. The Doctor's cock is rammed into him hard enough to make them both shout. And he keeps on and keeps on, taking Doc as much as Doc is taking him, oh he'll force the control freak to give it all up in exchange for the pleasure of a full-on fuck, _please Goddess!_ , no stops no holding back, not for the tiniest Gallifreyan physiological idiosyncrasy, not for any reason except a momentary scratch of his _cojones_. Nothing less than consummate sensory overload into joy, if he has to hold himself together with nothing but willpower and a Rock'n'Roll song until Time screams _Uncle_ , the cat solves its own paradox, and the universe _—_

{'BLIMEY CAPTAIN HARKNESS, DON'T YOU EVER STOP THINKING?!'}

Wait.

Who—

"Let go Jack, it's okay to let go too now." 

He lets go _— Goddess!_ strung between these two like he is, he has no choice but to let go! 

The lyrics plant themselves deep, somewhere beneath a banana grove. But it doesn't stop, the song in his head. Or the rhythm driving his body. The song keeps on playing as they get each other off.

It's quiet in his head when it's all over,

and he's released

_finally—_

His arms, to let him pull Rose to him just to hold her. And his body, to let him twist up to kiss the Doctor like a slow dance around the console. And his past to let himself tell them

"I love you."

and believe them when they say it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be a chapter 6 eventually, if Rose wants the last word.
> 
> Final note: bloose and sci, I love you.


End file.
